Victim of ‘bullying’ at school, with difficulties at home and a history of self-harm: The teenager who gunned down 19 children at a school in Uvalde, Texas, had a troubled record, similar to that of other perpetrators of previous school massacres.
Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old who was killed by a Border Patrol agent during his attack on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was a US citizen who lived with his grandmother.
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A day after the attack on Robb Elementary School, which also killed two teachers, details began to emerge of the young man who carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation: he had dropped out of high school and had no criminal record.
Ramos had been living with his grandmother for two months. According to the authorities, the local health departments were not aware of any psychological problems.
Ramos’s cousin, Mia, told Washington Post that when Ramos was younger they made fun of him for a speech impediment, which made him stutter and lisp, and that is why he told his grandmother that he wanted to stop attending classes.
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Stephen Garcia, a former friend of Ramos, confirmed that ‘bullying’ was a problem. “He was harassed a lot, a lot of people harassed him,” Garcia told the Post.
His now-deleted Instagram account showed photos of a young man with shoulder-length hair and closed eyes. His profile also included images of two semi-automatic assault rifles and a plastic pistol magazine.
🇺🇸 | KILLING IN USA: Salvador Ramos, 18, identified as the gunman who killed at least 14 students and a teacher at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, posted photos of rifles and a gun magazine on Instagram before shooting. pic.twitter.com/0skNzKuSZY
— Alert News 24 (@AlertaNews24) May 24, 2022
He was harassed a lot, a lot of people harassed him
There were also reports of fights between Ramos and his mother, who used drugs, according to neighbors. The clashes between mother and son were serious enough for police to come, they said.
Another friend, Santos Valdez, recalled that Ramos once cut his face “just for fun.”
In social media messages to a young German woman he had recently met online, Ramos told her that he had just shot his grandmother and was planning to do the same thing at a school.
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The 15-year-old, who lives in Frankfurt, said she had gotten angry that morning with her grandmother because she was “on the phone with AT&T,” a US telecommunications provider, on a call related to her phone.
According to the young woman, Ramos spent a lot of time alone at home and “never had plans with his friends.”
Mental health of the attackers
Bullying and mental health issues have been common denominators in America’s tragically frequent and deadly school shootings.
More than 20 years ago, two teenagers who had been bullied by other students killed 13 people and took their own lives at their high school in Columbine, Colorado.
In 2007, a mentally challenged student killed 32 people in a shooting at the Virginia State Polytechnic Institute. The attacker, who also killed himself, had referred to the Columbine shooters as “martyrs” in a video before the attack.
(Keep reading: The last chats of the author of the shooting in Texas before killing 19 children)
We need to do a better job with mental health
Also mentally disturbed was the perpetrator of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which in 2012 killed 26 people – including 20 children – as well as the student who was expelled for disciplinary reasons and later killed 17 people at a high school. from Parkland, Fla., in 2018.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday deflected a question about whether changes to gun laws were needed, pointing instead to mental health care.
“As a state, we as a society, we need to do a better job with mental health,” he said.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobbying group that has been instrumental in thwarting efforts to tighten US gun laws, took a similar tack, saying the shooting was the work of a “lone criminal and deranged”.
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The attack step by step
Ramos turned 18 on May 16 and bought his first rifle the next day. Three days later, he bought the second, and 375 rounds of ammunition.
The young man, a high school dropout with no criminal record, posted three messages on Facebook Tuesday morning announcing his plans, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told a news conference.
In the first he warned that he was going to shoot his grandmother, with whom he lived.
Abbott said Ramos hit the 66-year-old woman in the face, but she was able to call police and was airlifted in critical condition to a hospital near San Antonio, about 80 miles west of Uvalde.
After confirming in a second Facebook post that he had attacked his grandmother, Ramos posted a third, saying his next target was an elementary school.
He then drove a little over 3 km and ended up crashing near Robb Elementary School, where more than 500 second to fourth grade students, aged between seven and 10, had only three days of school left before the holidays. Of summer.
Dressed in black and wearing a tactical vest, Ramos was confronted by a school official but was able to enter the building through a back door. He then headed to two adjoining classrooms.
(You can see: Texas: massacre author announced on Facebook that he was going to attack a school)
“That’s where the carnage started,” said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The identities of the victims have been revealed as their relatives share their pain on the internet: Xavier López, a 10-year-old boy who loved to dance, Ellie García, the “happiest girl in the world” in the words of his father , or Amerie Jo Garza, a schoolgirl with a radiant smile who had just celebrated her tenth birthday.
How was he arrested?
Police arrived at the scene of the massacre in response to a report of a vehicle accident. Hearing gunshots coming from the school, they ran inside and were fired upon. Some police officers began breaking windows and evacuating children and teachers.
Police helped apprehend the attacker with a tactical team that included agents from the United States Border Patrol, which has an office in this town located just 100 km from the border with Mexico.
“Upon entering the building, the police and other agents were shot at by the subject, who was barricaded in,” said Marsha Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The security forces “interposed themselves between the attacker and the children to divert the attacker’s attention from the possible victims,” he explained.More than 30 minutes had passed since Ramos entered the school and was finally shot and killed by one of the Border Patrol agents.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING*
*With information from AFP
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