What prompted 18-year-old Salvador Ramos to enter Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, South Texas late Tuesday morning to kill 19 children and two teachers, going from class to class? classroom ? The shooter killed his victims “in an atrocious and senseless manner,” said Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The investigators are trying to obtain “detailed information on the profile” of the young killer, “his motives and the type of weapons used”, he further indicated.
An 18-year-old high school student from Uvalde
The young man would be an American citizen and was a student at Uvalde High School, said Texas Governor Greg Abbott, without specifying whether he had graduated this year. A mugshot circulated in local media shows a young man with shoulder-length brown hair, his face pale and expressionless.
Before perpetrating this killing, he would have “shot his grandmother”, continued Greg Abbott, stressing that he did not know the links between the two events. According to a local elected official, this woman was transported to a hospital in San Antonio in “critical condition”. Then he would have fled in the car which he would have abandoned near the Robb primary school after having had a “spectacular accident”. Around 11:30 am (local time), found by the police, he rushed inside the school and opened fire in several classes, Sergeant Estrada told CNN.
How did he get weapons?
According to Democratic Senator from Texas Roland Gutierrez, questioned by USA Today, he allegedly legally purchased two assault rifles from a local gun shop on his 18th birthday. “It was the first thing he did when he turned 18,” he said.
Sergeant Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Security said he was equipped on Tuesday with a backpack, a bulletproof vest and a rifle to carry out the attack. Authorities have not released the motive for the shooting, but the suspected shooter acted alone, school district police chief Pete Arredondo said.
He had sent photos of the weapons before the attack
According to CNN, Salvador Ramos texted a former classmate photos of a gun he owned and a bag full of ammunition days before the attack. According to his testimony, the teenager was made fun of in class because of the clothes he wore and his family’s financial situation, and he came less and less to high school: “He barely came to school , he slowly gave up,” he explained.
On social networks, he is associated with an Instagram account, deleted after the massacre, which contains several photos: two black and white self-portraits where he appears wearing a hooded jacket, hair down to the nape of his neck, and the photo of a rifle magazine. On another shot, we also see two semi-automatic rifles.
“He took his boxing gloves everywhere”
Although many neighbors of Salvador Ramos describe him as “calm”, a young woman who worked with him in a fast food restaurant until March evokes his aggressiveness in The Daily Beast “He was sometimes very rude to the girls, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking: ‘Do you know who I am ?’ And he was also sending inappropriate texts to the ladies,” she explained. She brings up videos of him in the park “fighting with boxing gloves. He took them everywhere with him, ”she continues.
A neighbor explains that his son regularly played with him, like many American teenagers, at the shooter Call of Duty, but that he had not seen him for quite a long time.