DALLAS — In a Fox News interview Friday, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales claimed the Uvalde gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was arrested four years ago for threatening a school shooting. Police dispute those claims.
“If law enforcement, you know, identified him four years ago as a threat, we need to figure out why he wasn’t – you know, how he got removed from that,” Gonzales, R-Texas, said during the interview.
The Uvalde Police Department said on April 19, 2018, two teenagers — one 13 and one 14 — were “planning to conduct a school shooting” at Uvalde High School during their senior year, 2022, but both are currently in custody.
The conflicting information adds to the public confusion about how police handled the shooting and whether they could have prevented any part of it. Authorities had also stated Ramos had no known criminal history, but they have since delivered conflicting reports.
According to the Uvalde Leader-News, the boys initially planned to carry out the shooting on April 20, 2022, which would coincide with the Columbine shooting anniversary, but one of the teens persuaded the other to instead commit the shooting in 2022 at Morales Junior High, where the 14-year-old was a student at the time.
The department said both boys were arrested in April 2018 and remain in custody at a juvenile detention facility in Del Rio, Texas — so neither was the shooter this week.
The department declined to release additional information, citing an ongoing investigation.
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