Minutes before Texas school massacre, teen shooter Salvador Ramos sent online warning
- Gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a school in Texas warned about his plans in social media posts, governor says
- Salvador Ramos, a high school dropout with no known criminal record or history of mental illness, was shot and killed by law enforcement
A gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas junior school in one of the deadliest school massacres in US history, posted his intentions online before barricading himself inside a fourth-grade classroom, where all the fatalities and injuries occurred, state and federal officials said Wednesday.
“We’re still trying to confirm motive, what triggered him,” Lieutenant Governor Christopher Olivarez, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman, told The Los Angeles Times.
Officials say the rampage began with the suspect, Salvador Ramos, 18, a fast-food worker, shooting his 66-year-old grandmother, Cecilia Martinez Gonzalez, in the face at her home in Uvalde. She survived and was undergoing surgery.
The gunman was spotted minutes later crashing his car into a ditch and running toward Robb Elementary School with a rifle. An officer with the Uvalde school district exchanged fire with him before he entered the school.
But at least 40 minutes passed – the shooter went through a back door, down two short hallways and ended up in a classroom where he opened fire – before a border patrol officer shot and killed him.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference that Ramos was a high school dropout with no criminal record or mental health history. He gave no warning of his crime, Abbott said, until about 30 minutes before he reached the school, when he posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot his grandmother, who had worked as a teacher’s aide for the junior school until 2020.