Salvador Ramos, who stands accused of perpetrating the most deadly US school shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack 10 years ago, reportedly shot his grandmother in the face after a fight about his failure to graduate from Uvalde Elementary School.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Texas Gov Greg Abbott said that Ramos sent three Facebook messages on Tuesday morning prior to his attack on Uvalde Elementary School. The first, which said, “I’m going to shoot my grandmother,” was followed by another message shortly thereafter in which he wrote, “I shot my grandmother.”
The final message from Mr Ramos read “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”
A spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company Meta said that Mr Ramos sent the messages privately to another person over a Faceook platform and that the company is fully cooperating with law enforcement. CNN reported that Mr Ramos sent the messages to a 15-year-old girl from Frankfurt, Germany whom he’d met online.
Mr Ramos’ grandmother is reportedly in critical condition. According to reporting from John Mone of Newsy, a neighbor of Ramos’ named Eduardo Trinidad said that Ramos was angry that he was not graduating from high school and got into an arguement with his grandmother the morning of the shooting.
Ramos’ grandmother was in critical condition as of Wednesday morning after being transported to a hospital in San Antonio.
Ramos had been a student at Uvalde High School, but was reportedly not on track to graduate with his classmates this spring.
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Wednesday that Ramos purchased a semiautomatic rifle at an area sporting goods store on 17 May. The next day, he purchased 375 rounds of ammunition for the rifle, and, two days after that, purchased another semiautomatic rifle.
The rifle purcahses were made legally. State Sen Ronald Gutierrez said told CNN on Tuesday night that the purchases were made for Mr Ramos’ eighteenth birthday. Mr Ramos posted a photograph of the assault rifles on his Instagram account just days before the shooting.
A classmate of Ramos’ said that the alleged shooter had stopped attending classes regularly and has been described by a number of community members as a young man who mainly kept to himself and had a quiet social life. He had no previous criminal history or mental health diagnoses. Uvalde’s high school gradution had been scheduled for Friday.
