Un 18-year-old American opened fire in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday May 24, killing 21 people, including 19 children under 10 and 2 teachers. The teenager, who had two assault rifles (it is not known if these are the weapons he used to perpetrate this massacre), was shot dead by the police after barricading himself in the establishment, reported several American media, including CNN and the New York Times.
The shooter was quickly identified as Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old American boy who had recently shared photos of guns and ammunition on his social media. He had recently bought himself two assault rifles and 375 cartridges, in several installments just after his 18and anniversary, according to CNN citing a local elected official.
A former classmate, with whom he still played video games online from time to time, also told CNN that he had exchanged messages with him four days before the shooting. “He sent me a picture of the weapon he was using…and a backpack full of ammunition,” he explained to the American channel. ” I asked him : Bro, why do you have this? And he answered me: Do not worry. Then : I am very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me. »
READ ALSOShooting in Texas: 19 children killed, a macabre record
Bullied when he was younger
According to several American sources, Salvador Ramos was the victim of harassment during his schooling. What his former classmate, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed with CNN. He explained that the shooter’s family had serious financial difficulties and that the other students made fun of him daily because of his clothes. Reason why he would have “slowly abandoned school”, according to this witness.
READ ALSOMarch 24, 1998. The day two schoolboys shoot their classmates
In addition, the American authorities were able to confirm that Salvador Ramos had been a student in the school where he perpetrated this mass killing. According to New York Post, he even confided in a woman on Instagram about this disastrous project. It is on this same social network that he shared pictures of two weapons. An account deactivated since. We see a young man with pale skin and shoulder-length black hair falling to his neck, in a photo facing a mirror. Another shot shows him even darker, staring blankly, in a gray hooded sweater. On one post, he is holding a gun magazine. Investigators are trying to obtain “detailed information about the profile” of the young killer, “his motives, the type of weapons used and whether he was entitled to possess them,” Governor Abbott said on Tuesday.
His ex-boss at Wendy’s, a fast food restaurant he worked for for a year before quitting a month ago, described him to the New York Times as someone quite calm, taciturn, and above all withdrawn from the rest of the team. “My employees talk to each other a lot and are friends. He wasn’t like that. No one really knew him. »
Salvador Ramos also played a lot of video games, especially fighting ones like Fortnite Where call of duty, raises a relative to the New York Times, Jeremy Munoz. The weekend before the tragedy, the latter says he received several photos of assault rifles from Salvador Ramos, similar to those posted on the alleged shooter’s Instagram counter.
“Four days ago,” another former classmate of the gunman, wishing to remain anonymous, recalled to CNN, “he sent me a picture of the AR (a type of assault rifle) he was using. …and a backpack full of 5.56 ammo, probably something like seven rounds.” “I was like, ‘man, why do you have that?’, and he said, ‘don’t worry. »
The young man, of American nationality, would have first targeted his grandmother – whose state of health remained to be specified – before going to school by car to perpetrate his massacre there.