Un 18-year-old American opened fire in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday May 24, killing 21 people, including 19 children under 10 and 2 teachers. The teenager, who had two assault rifles (it is not known if these are the weapons he used to perpetrate this massacre), was shot dead by the police after barricading himself in the establishment, reported several American media, including CNN and the New York Times.
The shooter was quickly identified as Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old American boy who had recently shared photos of guns and ammunition on his social media. He had recently bought himself two assault rifles and 375 cartridges, in several installments just after his 18e anniversary, according to CNN citing a local elected official. The young man had announced on Facebook that he was going to carry out the attack, state governor Greg Abbott reported on Wednesday.
Around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday (6:30 p.m. French time), equipped with a bulletproof vest in which he had stored several magazines and a rifle, Salvador Ramos rushed inside the school, locks him in a classroom and kills 19 children and the two teachers. But before going to this school, he shot his 66-year-old grandmother and then fled. According to Greg Abbott, he announced on Facebook – by private messages, the platform said – that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then he had done it. “The third message, probably less than 15 minutes before arriving at school, said: + I will open fire in an elementary school,” said Greg Abbott. Salvador Ramos was living with his grandmother, authorities confirmed on Wednesday.
READ ALSOShooting in Texas: 19 children killed, a macabre record
Bullied when he was younger
The alleged shooter complained to his grandmother that he no longer wanted to go to class, told the Washington Post a cousin, Mia. “He wasn’t really a very social person since he was bullied because of his stutter,” she adds. What his former classmate, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed with CNN. He explained that the shooter’s family had serious financial difficulties and that the other students made fun of him daily because of his clothes. Reason why he would have “slowly abandoned school”, according to this witness. “He was being harassed very harshly, and by a lot of people”, also testifies to the daily a former close friend, Stephen Garcia.
READ ALSOMarch 24, 1998. The day two schoolboys shoot their classmates
Isolated, he skipped classes and gradually dropped out of high school. Salvador Ramos scars his face with a knife, says another teenager who has known him since primary school. In addition, the American authorities were able to confirm that Salvador Ramos had been a student in the school where he perpetrated this mass killing. According to New York Posthe even confided in a woman on Instagram about this disastrous project.
It is on this same social network that he shared pictures of two weapons. An account deactivated since. 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, staring blankly, in a gray hooded sweater. On one post, he is holding a gun loader. Investigators are trying to obtain “detailed information about the profile” of the young killer, “his motives, the type of weapons used and whether he was entitled to possess them,” Governor Abbott said on Tuesday.
“No one really knew him”
His ex-boss at Wendy’s, a fast food restaurant he worked for for a year before quitting a month ago, described him to the New York Times as someone quite calm, taciturn, and above all withdrawn from the rest of the team. “My employees talk to each other a lot and are friends. He wasn’t like that. No one really knew him. Salvador Ramos also played a lot of video games, especially fighting ones like Fortnite or Call of Duty, raises a relative to the New York Times, Jeremiah Munoz.
The weekend before the tragedy, the latter says he received several photos of assault rifles from Salvador Ramos, similar to those posted on the alleged shooter’s Instagram counter. “Four days ago,” another former classmate of the gunman, wishing to remain anonymous, recalled to CNN, “he sent me a picture of the AR (a type of assault rifle) he was using. …and a backpack full of 5.56 ammo, probably something like seven rounds.” “I was like, ‘man, why do you have that?’, and he said, ‘don’t worry. »
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): school and social breakdown, fascination with weapons, conflict with the family…