The 18-year-old gunman who allegedly shot and killed 19 school children and two adults at a Texas elementary school cryptically messaged a stranger “I’m about to” just hours before he opened fire on the children.
Salvador Ramos was identified as the suspect in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said. He was killed by police after the shooting.
Ramos, who attended the town’s high school, reportedly shot his 66-year-old grandmother before driving to the school armed with a handgun and two legally purchased rifles.
The evening manager at a Wendy’s in Uvalde where Ramos worked told CNN that the teen “kept to himself mostly.”
“He felt like the quiet type, the one who doesn’t say much. He didn’t really socialize with the other employees,” Adrian Mendes told the outlet. “He just worked, got paid, and came in to get his check.”
A young woman who worked with him until March admitted she noticed an aggressive streak.
“He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies,” the former co-worker told The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.
“At the park, there’d be videos of him trying to fight people with boxing gloves. He’d take them around with him,” she said.
Here is everything we know about the gunman so far:
Shooter posted photos of guns on social media
An Instagram account believed to be Ramos’ contained photos of guns and selfies. The account, with the username “salv8dor_”, was taken down after Abbott released the name of the suspected mass shooter.
The account’s single grid post features three photos: a mirror selfie of Ramos in a sweatshirt, a grainy black-and-white closeup of his face, and a first-person shot of a person holding a firearm magazine in their lap.
The same account shared a photo of two rifles lying side by side to its Stories. The account tagged another user in the photo.
That user, @epnupues, said Ramos was a total stranger who tagged her in the gun photo and messaged her that he “got a lil secret.”
The Instagram user, who said she doesn’t live in Texas, questioned why he tagged her in the pic of the rifles and said she found it scary that he tagged her.
“You gonna repost my gun pics,” @sal8dor_ direct messaged the girl on May 12.
“what your guns gotta do with me,” she replied on Friday.
“Just wanted to tag you,” he said back.
Then at 5:43 a.m. Tuesday, @salv8dor_ messaged her: “I’m about to.”
The girl asked “about to what” to which he answered, “I’ll tell you before 11.”
He said he’d text her in an hour and urged her to respond.
“I got a lil secret I wanna tell u,” he messaged with a smiley-face emoji covering its mouth.
He never told the girl his secret. His last message at 9:16 a.m. was “Ima air out.”
About two-and-a-half hours later, Robb Elementary School was placed on lockdown around 11:43 a.m. local time after gunshots were heard in the area, school officials wrote on Facebook.
About a half-hour later, the school reported an “active shooter” at the location, who was in police custody by 1:06 p.m., the Uvalde Police Department confirmed on Facebook.
Abbott confirmed that police fatally shot Ramos at the scene.
Ramos bought rifles used during rampage legally
Ramos bought a pair of semi-automatic rifles on May 17 and May 20 — just after celebrating his 18th birthday on May 16 — from Oasis Outback, an outdoors and hunting store on Uvalde’s Main Street that’s attached to a restaurant, according to officials and the New York Times.
Ramos also purchased 375 rounds of 5.56 ammunition, Texas State Sen. John Whitmire told the Austin American-Statesman.
After the armed teenager barged into the school, he barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade class and proceeded to shoot the teachers and children huddling inside, authorities said.
Ramos allegedly shot one girl as she tried to call 911, leaving her best friend sitting next to her covered in her blood.
Ramos carried out shooting after dispute with grandma
The 18-year-old reportedly had an argument with his grandmother over his failure to graduate from high school before the mass shooting.
The news outlet Newsy reported, quoting Ramos’ neighbor Eduardo Trinidad, that Ramos shot his 66-year-grandmother, jumped into a car and sped away.
Trinidad later told The Post when reached for comment that he did not overhear the fight directly.
After hearing a commotion on Tuesday, Trinidad headed over to the grandmother’s home, where other neighbors relayed to him the details of the feud, he said.
Ramos’ grandmother was listed in critical condition Wednesday.
Gunman’s grandpa claims he didn’t know about guns
Ronaldo Reyes, 72, Ramos’ grandfather, told ABC News he was unaware that his grandson had purchased two AR-15-style rifles, or that they were in the house.
Being a convicted felon, it is illegal for Reyes to live in a house where firearms are present.
“I didn’t know he had weapons. If I’d have known, I would have reported it,” Reyes said.
Reyes claimed that there were no red flags on the morning of the shooting. The grandfather downplayed Ramos’ dispute with his grandmother, saying that the two had a tiff over the payment of a phone bill, rather than Ramos’ being a drop-out.
According to Reyes, Ramos had been staying with him and his wife because the teen had “problems” with his mother.
Ramos had no known criminal, mental health history
The teen gunman had no known criminal or mental health history, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday.
“The gunman was 18 years old and reportedly a high school dropout,” an emotional Abbott told a press conference.
“Reportedly, there has been no criminal history identified yet,” he continued.
“He may have had a juvenile record, but that has yet to be determined.”
Ramos also had no known history with mental health issues, Abbott said, adding that the “only information that was known in advance was posted by the gunman on Facebook” shortly before the violence.
The first post — which was posted approximately 30 minutes before Ramos reached the school — was about wanting to shoot his grandma, the governor said.
About 15 minutes later, Ramos then posted about going to “shoot an elementary school.”
Ramos exhibited disturbing behavior leading up to the rampage
Ramos’ friend Santos Valdez Jr., 18, said the two had been close, playing video games and basketball regularly, until his friend’s behavior began to “deteriorate,” The Washington Post reported.
At one point, he recounted, Ramos showed up at a park with scratch marks across his face and said he had been attacked by a cat.
“Then he told me the truth, that he’d cut up his face with knives over and over and over,” Valdez told the newspaper.
“I was like, ‘You’re crazy, bro, why would you do that?’” he said. Ramos told him it was just “for fun,” Valdez said.
The friend said he last interacted with Ramos just two hours before the attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
The two messaged on Instagram, where Valdez reshared a meme that said, “WHY TF IS SCHOOL STILL OPEN,” according to the Washington Post, which reported that Ramos replied, “Facts” and “That’s good tho right?”
Valdez reportedly wrote: “Idek [I don’t even know] I don’t even go to school lmao.”
But Ramos never responded to the message — or even opened it, he said.
Valdez also described how Ramos used to drive around with another pal and shoot people at random with a BB gun — and also egged people’s cars.
Ramos was reportedly bullied in school
Friends and relatives also said Ramos had been bullied throughout middle school and junior high for a speech impediment – a stutter and lisp, according to the Washington Post.
His cousin Mia said she saw students mocking his impediment during middle school, where he tried at first to ignore the bullying but then told his grandmother that he didn’t want to go back to school.
“He wasn’t very much of a social person after being bullied for the stutter,” said Mia, who declined to provide her last name. “I think he just didn’t feel comfortable anymore at school.”
Nadia Reyes, a high school classmate, told the paper that Ramos recently posted an Instagram story of himself yelling at his mom, who he said was trying to kick him out of their home.
“He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there and he’d call his mom a b—- and say she wanted to kick him out,” she told the paper. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”
Ramos moved to his grandmother’s home across town a few months ago, according to neighbor Ruben Flores, 41, who said he last saw the grandmother Sunday when she stopped by the mom’s Hood Street property, which she also owned.
He told the Washington Post that she told him she was in the process of evicting Ramos’ mother because of her drug issues.
Ramos allegedly shot his grandmother before heading over to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with two assault rifles around 11:32 a.m. local time Tuesday, according to officials.
Additional reporting by Gabrielle Fonrouge and Snejana Farberov
