The perpetrator of the Uvalde, Texas shooting on Tuesday was an 18-year-old troubled, isolated, school dropout who bought two assault rifles, killed 19 children and two teachers before being shot dead by police, a massacre he had announced by private messages on Facebook.
Clean record
Identified as Salvador Ramos, the young American had grown up in this southwestern Texas town. No known criminal record or psychological problem at this stage, “there was no real warning sign of his crime”, he said Wednesday at a press conference the governor of the state, Greg Abbott. On May 17, the day after he turns 18, he buys a semi-automatic assault rifle. Two days later, 375 cartridges. And on May 20, he acquires a second gunTexas Department of Public Safety Chief Steven McCraw said on Wednesday.
He announces his gesture on Facebook
Two weapons then appear on an Instagram account that seems to be his, since deactivated. 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, his gaze absent, dressed in a gray hooded sweater. On one post, he is holding a gun magazine.
Around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday (4:30 p.m. GMT), equipped with a bulletproof vest in which he had stored several magazines and a rifle, the man rushed inside the school, locked himself in a class and kills 19 children and the two teachers. But before going to this school, he shot his 66-year-old grandmother who ran away. According to Greg Abbott, he announced on Facebook – by private messages, the platform said – that he was going to shoot his grandmother, and then he had. “The third message, probably less than 15 minutes before arriving at school, read: ‘I am going to open fire in a primary school'”said Mr. Abbott.
Dropping out and bullying
The teenager lived with his grandmother, confirmed the authorities on Wednesday, because, according to relatives quoted by the American media, he had approached her after arguments with his mother. The alleged shooter complained to his grandmother that he no longer wanted to go to class, tells the Washington Post a cousin, Mia. “He wasn’t really a very social person since he was bullied because of his stutter”she adds. “He was being harassed very harshly, and by a lot of people,” also testifies to the daily a former close friend, Stephen Garcia.
Isolated, he skipped classes and gradually dropped out of high school. The young man makes facial scarification with a knife, says another teenager who has known him since primary school. He worked for a year in a Wendy’s fast food restaurant before leaving a month ago. “He didn’t really interact with the other employees”, his boss told CNN.
These personality elements bring him closer to other perpetrators of school massacres, such as those in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 (17 dead) or Columbine, Colorado, in 1999 (13 dead): academic and social breakdown, fascination with weapons, conflict with the family… Salvador Ramos also plays a lot of video games, especially combat ones like Fortnite or Call of Duty, reports a relative to the New York Times, Jeremiah Munoz. The weekend before the tragedy, the latter says he received two photos of assault rifles from Salvador Ramos, similar to those posted on Instagram. “Four days ago,” another former classmate of the shooter who wished to remain anonymous, recalled to CNN, “He sent me a photo of the AR (the type of assault rifle employed on Tuesday) that he is using…and a backpack full of 5.56 ammo, probably something like seven magazines.” “I was like ‘man, why do you have that?’, and he said ‘don’t worry'”.