Texas school shooting: Hero girl shot dead ‘as she tried to call 911’

All of the kids killed in the mass shooting in Texas Tuesday were in the same fourth grade classroom when teenage gunman Salvador Ramos shot them dead with an AR-15 he legally bought on his 18th birthday. 

At least 19 students and two teachers were killed in the massacre, which saw 18-year-old Salvador Ramos storm the at Robb Elementary in Uvalde – roughly 80 miles west of San Antonio – just after 11:30 am.

Each of the victims – all aged under 11 – were killed inside a single classroom, the Texas Department of Public Safety revealed Wednesday, as authorities continue to assess the situation and identify all the victims.

Ramos – who just days before the attack bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media – indiscriminately rained bullets on the room, before being fatally shot himself by police.

Cops are still gauging the extent of the disaster – the deadliest shooting at a US elementary school since the 2012 Sandy Hook killing – as new victim names continue to emerge.

Of the 19 kids slain, so far, 15 have been named.

Included among the dead was an eight-year-old boy whose grieving grandfather lamented was the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known’ and a 10-year-old girl who was killed as she tried to phone 911 while sitting next to her best friend, who ended up covered in her blood. 

Another victim was confirmed by state Gov. Greg Abbot to be the daughter of a local sheriff.

Ramos also reportedly shot his grandmother, believed to be in her 60s, before embarking on the killing spree. The pair reportedly had been arguing about the teen’s failure to graduate from nearby Uvalde High School.

The woman – who served as Ramos’ guardian – is now in a local hospital fighting for her life.

The teenager has been described as a self-harming loner who was bullied because of his clothes, but who managed to save nearly $5,000 to buy two AR-15 guns and three hundred rounds of ammunition after turning 18 last week. 

It has since been revealed that the shooter was known to police because of his violent arguments with his drug-addicted mother.

In addition to those confirmed killed as a result of Ramos’ killing spree, more than a dozen kids were reportedly injured in the attack, including a ten-year-old girl taken to hospital in the nearby city of San Antonio in critical condition. A 66-year-old woman – believed to be Ramos’s grandmother who he shot at the start of his killing spree – was in the same hospital, also in critical condition.

A second hospital within Uvalde said a further 13 children had been brought in Tuesday, without saying what condition they are in. Police warned late Tuesday that the death toll is expected to rise.

Below are the victims confirmed to be dead so far. 

Amerie Jo Garza, 10

Amerie Jo Garza, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary, was one of 19 students confirmed to be killed Tuesday morning by Ramos, who cops say was carrying a handgun and an AR-15 during the attack that also killed two teachers in the classroom. 

Her grandmother, Berlinda Irene Arreola, said the 10-year-od was killed as she tried to phone 911 while sitting next to her best friend, who ended up ‘covered in her blood.’ 

Arreola said Ramos told the students and staffers inside the room, ‘You’re going to die,’ before opening fire – shooting her granddaughter dead as she tried to phone for help. 

‘So the gunman went in and he told the children, “You’re going to die,” Berlinda told The Daily Beast. 

‘And [Amerie] had her phone and she called 911. And instead of grabbing it and breaking it or taking it from her, he shot her. She was sitting right next to her best friend. Her best friend was covered in her blood.’ 

Uziyah Garcia, 8

Uziyah Garcia, the youngest victim to be identified so far at age 8, was also killed in the attack.

The child’s family announced he was killed hours after announcing he was among the many children unaccounted for following the tragedy.  

The boy’s grandfather, Manny Renfro, broke the news early Wednesday after being notified by authorities.

‘[He was] the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,’ Renfro said. 

‘I’m not just saying that because he was my grandkid.’

Renfro recalled how Uziyah last visited him in San Angelo over spring break.

‘We started throwing the football together and I was teaching him pass patterns. 

‘Such a fast little boy and he could catch a ball so good,’ the grieving grandad said. 

‘There were certain plays that I would call that he would remember and he would do it exactly like we practiced.’ 

 

Makenna Elrod, 10

Makenna Elrod, 10, had also been among the missing in the chaos that followed the massacre, with her father, Brandon Elrod telling reporters at the time he feared ‘she may not be alive.’ 

Her death was eventually confirmed by a family friend on Wednesday.

‘It’s pretty sad what this world’s coming to,’ the girl’s father told local outlet KTRK after the shooting.

A mother of one of Makenna’s friends lamented the loss in a post to Facebook. 

‘Sweet Makenna Rest in Paradise!! My heart is shattered as my daughter Chloe loved her so much!!’ the mom wrote.

A relative Wednesday confirmed that the girl had been among the victims.

Xavier Lopez, 10

Xavier Lopez, 10, was the first student victim to be identified as one of Ramos’ victims.

The child’s mother, Felicha Martinez, told the Washington Post Tuesday that just hours before the massacre, the mom had been at the school to see her son participate an honor roll ceremony. 

She took a picture showing her son showing off his certificate.

In the last exchange she had with the child, the mom heartbreakingly told the boy that she was proud of him and that she loved him, giving him a hug goodbye – not knowing it would be the last time she would see him alive.

‘He was funny, never serious and his smile… that smile I will never forget,’ she recalled after learning of his death from police. ‘It would always cheer anyone up.’

The boy’s cousin, Lisa Garza, 54, of Arlington, said Xavier enjoyed swimming and had been looking forward to the summer.

‘He was just a loving 10-year-old little boy, just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,’ she said. 

‘He was very bubbly, loved to dance with his brothers, his mom. This has just taken a toll on all of us.’

Amelia Sandoval, Lopez’s grandmother, said: ‘It’s just so hard… you send your kids to school thinking they are going to make it back home but they’re not.’

Eliahana Torres, 10

Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10, had also been missing for hours until she was confirmed to be among the dead.

Adolfo Cruz, her great-grandfather, said she didn’t want to attend school the day of the shooting – but was told by her family that she had to attend.

He said he remained outside the school gates throughout the night until he leanrned of her fate from local authorities.

‘I hope she is alive,’ he said at the time. 

Torres was an avid baseball player and played the sport in a local little league. 

Ellie Lugo, 10

Ellie Lugo was named as a victim of Tuesday’s attack by her parents, with Steven Garcia and Jennifer Lugo confirming her death several hours after she was listed among the missing. 

‘It’s hard to issue out a statement on anything right now my mind is going at 1000 miles per hour… but I do wanna send our thoughts and prayers to those who also didn’t make it home tonight!!! Our Ellie was a doll and was the happiest ever,’ Steven Lugo said Wednesday.

‘Mom and Dad love you never forget that and please try and stay by our side.’  

Nevaeh Bravo

Nevaeh Bravo was confirmed to be among the dead late Tuesday, after her cousin posted on social media following the shooting to ask for helping the girl. 

Around 9 pm, she broke the news on Twitter.

‘Unfortunately my beautiful Nevaeh was one of the many victims from todays tragedy,’ she wrote.

Sje said the schoolchild was ‘flying high’ and asked for the family to be kept in people’s prayers  

‘Our Nevaeh has been found. She is flying with the angels above. We love you Navaeh very much princess.’

‘Thank you for the support and help,’ she wrote. ‘Rest in peace my sweet girl, you didn’t deserve this.’

Bravo’s age could not immediately be confirmed.  

Tess Marie Mata

Tess Marie Mata was also among those to perish in the attack, her sister, Faith Mata, revealed in a post to Facebook Wednesday.

‘I honestly have no words just sadness, confusion, and anger,’ she wrote.

‘I’m sad because we will never get to tag team on mom and dad again and tell each other how much we mean to each other, I’m confused because how can something like this happen to my sweet, caring, and beautiful sister, and I’m angry because a coward took you from us.’

Photos shared with the post showed Tess smiling in a baby photo, snuggling with a cat, doing gymnastics, flashing a peace sign, and posing in front of a large heart mural.

‘Sissy I miss you so much, I just want to hold you and tell you how pretty you are, I want to take you outside and practice softball, I want to go on one last family vacation, I want to hear your contagious laugh, and I want you to hear me tell you how much I love you,’ she wrote.

Her age could not immediately be confirmed.

Rojelio Torres, 10

Rojelio Torres, 10, was initially reported missing by his father, but on Wednesday was confirmed dead by his family.

A person who said she was the boy’s cousin wrote on Twitter: ‘It breaks my heart to say my rojelio is now with the angels I’ll forever miss you and love you my angel.’

The child’s father , Federico Torres, told Houston reporters that he was at work when he learned about the shooting and immediately raced to the school.

‘They sent us to the hospital, to the civic center, to the hospital and here again, nothing, not even in San Antonio,’ he said. ‘They don’t tell us anything, only a photo, wait, hope that everything is well.’

Nearly half a day later, cops broke the news to the boy’s family.

‘Our entire family waited almost 12 hours since the shooting to find out Rojelio Torres, my 10-year-old nephew, was killed in this tragedy,’ Torres’ aunt, Precious Perez, told KSAT. ‘We are devastated and heartbroken. Rojer was a very intelligent, hard-working and helpful person. He will be missed and never forgotten.’ 

Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10

Jayce Luevanos, 10, died in the shooting along with his ten-year-old cousin, Jailah, the child’s mother said Wednesday.

In a Facebook post, uncle Unberto Gonzalez shared photos of both kids while offering a touching tribute.

‘My babies going to miss them like crazy!!!,’ Gonzalez wrote. ‘We luv y’all so much!!! I’m just lost right now!!! Fly high my beautiful Angels!!’

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10

Ten-year-old Jailah Nicole Silguero was also killed in the shooting, her mother, Veronica Luevanos, tearfully revealed to Univision Wednesday.

She also lost her 10-year-old nephew Jayce to the tragedy.

She said Jailah loved to dance and film videos on TikTok.

The child reportedly also asked her mom the morning of the shooting if she could stay home from school – a request the now mourning mom rebuffed. 

‘I took her to school, but she didn’t want to go. She told her father, “Can I stay home?”‘ Luevanos said, noting that it was not a common occurrence for her daughter to make such a request. ‘I think she knew something would happen.’

Luevanos’ mom confirmed the loss on Facebook Wednesday.

‘Fly high my angels. We’re going to miss yall so much,’ wrote Veronica Luevanos – whose dad had died just a week earlier.

‘I’m so heart broken,’ she wrote with a photo of her daughter and nephew. 

‘My baby I love u so much … fly high baby girl.’ 

Alithia Ramirez, 10

 Fourth grader Alithia Ramirez was confirmed dead early Wednesday by her father, Ryan Ramirez, who shared a post to Facebook showing the 10-year-old with angel’s wings. He had used the same photo the previous day as he pleaded for help finding her after the massacre

He had heartbreakingly used the same photo the previous day as he desperately pleaded for help finding her after the massacre.

‘Trying to find my daughter Alithia. I called all the hospitals and nothing,’ he wrote at the time.

He also reporters during his frantic search, ‘I’m trying to find out where my baby’s at.’ 

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, was another killed by Ramos Tuesday – along with her cousin, who has yet to be identified.

Annabell’s father spent the afternoon after the shooting in frantic search for his daughter. 

Speaking to KHOU11 Tuesday, he lamented at how he was at a loss as to what do, having little success with the search.

‘They’re not letting us in at the hospital right now so we don’t know where to go.’

 She has since been declared to be among the dead.

Miranda Mathis, 11

Miranda Mathis, 11,  was also confirmed as another casualty from the mass shooting early Wednesday, in a Facebook post by an older cousin who earlier that day had posted a desperate plea for help in locating the child.

‘My sweet baby cousin we loved u dearly,’ Deanna Miller wrote alongside a photo of the child with angel wings.

‘I’m so sorry this happen to u baby please keep my family in your prayers,’ she grieved.

Miller’s kids had also been at the school at the time of the shooting, but survived the attack.

One of her sons told her that they were ushered out of a window by staffers during the attack and subsequently ran to a nearby funeral home after ‘he heard the shooter say he was gonna kill all the kids.’

Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Aniyah Rubio, 10

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio – who was better known to friends as ‘Lexi’ – was confirmed dead just before midnight on Tuesday.

The ten-year-old was shot dead just hours after posing for a photo with her parents at the school’s honor roll ceremony.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, the girl’s mother, wrote of the loss: ‘My beautiful, smart, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio was recognized today for All-A honor roll. She also received the good citizen award. We told her we loved her and would pick her up after school. We had no idea this was goodbye.’ 

Maite Yuleana

Maite was another student to die in the attack that had attended the honor roll ceremony just hours before.

A cousin of the girl’s mother, Ana Rodriguez, announced the loss Wednesday. 

‘It is with a heavy heart I come on here on behalf of my cousin Ana who lost her sweet baby girl in yesterday’s senseless shooting.  

‘We are deeply saddened by the lose [sic] of this sweet smart little girl…. God bless and may she R.I.P Maite Rodriguez we love you.’

Another relative shared a photo of Maite with her honor roll certificate.

Her age could not immediately be confirmed.

Jose Flores Jr, 10

 Jose Flores, 10, was also killed in the shooting after attending the honor roll ceremony, where he was pictured triumphantly clutching a certificate celebrating the accomplishment.

Uncle Christopher Salazar confirmed to the Washington Post Wednesday that his 10-year-old nephew was among the dead, after sharing a tribute to the child on Facebook.

“I love you and I miss you,” Salazar wrote in the post.  

The boy’s father described Jose to CNN as an amazing boy and big brother to his two younger siblings.

‘He was always fill of energy,’ Jose Flores Sr. said. ‘Ready to play till the night.’

He said the boy loved playing baseball and video games.

Irma Garcia, 46 – fourth grade teacher

Garcia, who co-taught with Mireles for the last five year, had been at Robb Elementary for 23 years. 

Married to Joe for 24 years, she was a mother of four – Cristian, completing Marine boot camp; Jose, attending Texas State university University; Lyliana, a sophomore in high school; and Alysandra, a 7th grader. 

‘My tia did not make it, she sacrificed herself protecting the kids in her classroom, i beg of you to keep my family including all of her family in y’all’s prayers , IRMA GARCIA IS HER NAME and she died a HERO,’ tweeted her nephew John. 

‘She was loved by many and will truly be missed.’

She was nominated as teacher of the year for the 2018-19 awards, organized by Trinity University. 

Eva Mireles, 44 – fourth grade teacher

Mireles, a fourth grade teacher, was identified by her family as being one of the staff members shot dead. She had worked in education for 17 years. 

Her husband Ruben Ruiz, a veteran detective and SWAT team member currently serving as a police officer with the school district, held regular active shooter drills for the schools – most recently at the end of March.

One of the rifles that Ramos legally purchased was found alongside his body in the school, police sources told Click2Houston, while another was found in a truck which he crashed close by. 

A backpack filled with loaded magazines was found abandoned on the way into the school, while seven 30-round magazines were found inside the grounds. It was not immediately clear whether they were full or empty. Ramos was found wearing a body armor vest, police added, though it had no armor plating inside. 

Joe Biden, speaking at the White House where he had ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honour of the victims, kicked off the inevitable debate about gun control. Declaring himself ‘sick and tired’ of the cyclical discussion, he called for voters to ‘turn this pain into action’ to prevent more mass killings. ‘We have to act,’ he said.

‘As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done,’ he said. 

Ted Cruz, Republican senator for Texas, led the response – repeating well-worn arguments that ‘restricting the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens’ to prevent mass shootings ‘doesn’t work’. The solution, he said, is to put armed officers on school campuses. Cruz is due to speak an at NRA conference on Friday.

Children confirmed dead by family members included 10-year-olds Xavier Lopez, Eliahana Torres, and Makenna Elrod, and eight-year-old Uziyah Garcia.

Another girl called Ellie Garcia was also confirmed to have died by her grieving parents. 

Angel Garza, the father of Amerie who had been appealing on Facebook for news of his then-missing daughter, told ABC News late Tuesday: ‘Thank you everyone for the prayers and help trying to find my baby,

‘She’s been found. My little love is now flying high with the angels above. Please don’t take a second for granted. Hug your family. Tell them you love them. I love you Amerie Jo. Watch over your baby brother for me.’

A picture of the gunman has also started to emerge as a bullied loner, picked on at school because of a lisp, a habit of wearing eyeliner, his clothes and because he came from a poor family.

Those who knew Ramos or his relatives say he was a ‘nice’ but ‘quiet’ boy who grew increasingly violent as he became older, amid relentless bullying both in school and online.

Santos Valdez told the Washington Post that he used to be friends with Ramos and played online shooter games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty with him, until the pair stopped talking as Ramos’s behaviour ‘deteriorated.’

Valdez said Ramos had showed up to the park one time with cuts all over his face, initially claiming he was scratched by a cat before admitting that he did it to himself with a knife.

Stephen Garcia, who considered himself Ramos’s best friend in eighth grade, said he was ‘bullied by a lot of people’ including for over a photo of himself wearing eyeliner which led to ‘gay’ taunts. Garcia said Ramos dropped out of school when he moved away to another part of the state, and the two had lost touch. 

Others confirmed that Ramos had stopped attending classes, and did not intend to take part in graduation this summer. Instead, he got a job at a local Wendy’s restaurant. 

A colleague there described Ramos has having an aggressive streak. She told the Daily Beast he walked around with a pair of boxing gloves at the park, asking people to fight him and filming it. He also menaced co-workers, asking one of the cooks: ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes… and he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies,’ the former colleague said, asking for her name not to be used. 

As an 18th birthday present to himself earlier this month, Ramos bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media, including in ominous messages sent hours before the killing started.

A teenage acquaintance of Ramos, who lives in Los Angeles and claims to barely know him, posted screenshots of messages he sent her early Tuesday after tagging her in a picture of his rifles. In them, he said he wanted to share a ‘lil secret’ and urged her to respond to him. The conversation ended before Ramos revealed his secret.

Ruben Flores, who knew Ramos’s family, said he had an unstable home life and got into blow-up fights with his mother, who he grew up with alongside two sisters in a house around a five minute drive from Robb Elementary. 

Police had been called to the home on more than one occasion, Flores added.

She said Ramos had moved in with his grandmother ‘a few months ago’. Flores said the grandmother was in the process of evicting Ramos’s mother from her house, which the elderly lady owned.

The deadly assault in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.

On May 14, an 18-year-old self-declared white supremacist shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, targeting black people.

The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and wounding five.

Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to strengthen – or weaken – their own restrictions.

The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest data.

It was the deadliest such incident since 14 high school students and three adult staff were killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018 – and the worst at an elementary school since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed. 

‘The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,’ said Joe Biden, addressing the country from the White House on Tuesday night.

‘As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name will we stand up to the gun lobby?’ 

He added: ‘Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep on letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone?’ 

 

 

‘Let me assure you, the intruder is deceased,’ said Pete Arredondo, chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department. 

‘We are not looking for another individual in relation to this case.’

Ramos’s social media was full of photos of guns, which he bought legally on his 18th birthday, state senator Roland Gutierrez said.  

Gutierrez said that Ramos was born in North Dakota but lived in Uvalde. 

Ramos messaged a woman he knew on Instagram, tagging her in a photo of the guns.

‘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 5:43am on Tuesday, @salv8dor_ messaged her and said: ‘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.

‘Be grateful I tagged you,’ he wrote. 

She replied: ‘No it’s just scary,’ adding: ‘I barely know you and you tag me in a picture with some guns?’

His last message at 9:16am on Tuesday was ‘Ima air out’.

The shooting started around 11:32am. 

The woman reacted with horror when she learnt what he had done.

‘He’s a stranger I know nothing about him he decided to tag me in his gun post,’ she wrote.

‘I’m so sorry for the victims and their families I really don’t know what to say.’

She then added: ‘The only reason I responded to him was because I was afraid of him I wish I stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime. I didn’t know.’

When an Instagram user asked if she was his girlfriend, she replied: ‘I don’t know him and I don’t even live in Texas.’

Robb Elementary School, which has 600 students enrolled, is located in the city of Uvalde, hometown of Matthew McConaughey, 60 miles east of the Mexican border and 80 miles west of San Antonio. 

A school friend of Ramos’s said that he sent him the photos of his guns too.

‘He would message me here and there, and four days ago he sent me a picture of the AR he was using … and a backpack full of 5.56 rounds, probably like seven mags,’ the friend told CNN.

‘I was like, ‘bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me,’ he added.

The friend said Ramos was mocked by others for the clothes he wore and his family’s financial situation, and eventually was seen less in class.

He largely dropped out, and took the job at Wendy’s, where co-workers remember him as quiet.

Adrian Mendes, evening manager at the Wendy’s, said Ramos ‘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,’ Mendes told CNN.

‘He just worked, got paid, and came in to get his check.’

Mendes said that he did not know Ramos well – he was already employed when Mendes began in February – and didn’t see him most of the time because they were on different shifts. 

Ramos worked from 11am to 4pm or 5pm, five days a week.

Photos show a pickup truck that crashed outside the school, which, according to Abbott, Ramos abandoned before entering the school. 

He was involved in a gunfight with border patrol agents who arrived on the scene. One of the agents was injured, but is expected to survive. 

Biden, who flew home from Japan on Tuesday, addressed the nation from the Roosevelt Room of the White House at 8:45pm. Air Force One landed just before 7pm. 

‘I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this. Again. Another massacre,’ a visibly emotional Biden said.

Speaking from the White House Roosevelt Room with First Lady Jill Biden clad in black by his side, the president said: ‘Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful innocent, second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happen – see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake?’

He took a moment to empathize with parents who would never see their young children again after Tuesday.

‘Parents will never be the same. To lose a child, it’s like having a piece of your soul ripped away,’ said the president, who lost his son Beau Biden to brain cancer in 2015.

‘There’s a hollowness in your chest you feel like you’re being sucked into it. And never going to be able to get out. Suffocating. And it’s never quite the same. It’s the feeling shared by the siblings and the grandparents and the family members and the community that’s left behind.’ 

He lamented there were ‘so many crush spirits’ left to mourn the more than dozen victims.

‘So tonight, I asked the nation to pray for them. Give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.’

His voice growing louder, Biden continued: ‘As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?’

Biden recalled the numerous mass shootings over the last decade, including visiting Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a gunman killed 26 people including 20 children while he was vice president. He also remarked on the this month’s mass shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York.

‘I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. I spent my career as a senator and vice president working to pass common sense gun laws,’ he said. 

‘We can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy, but we know they work and have positive impact. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down, when the law expired mass shootings tripled.’

He said the ability for a teenage gunman, like Salvador Ramos, to be able to ‘walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.;

‘What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?’ Biden questioned.

He then accused gun makers of spending ‘two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons, which make them the most and largest profit.’ 

The flags above the White House are flying at half staff.

Concerned parents were captured at the scene desperately searching for their children and video from the chaotic scene showed police arriving to the school campus with their guns in hand.

One widely shared video appears to show the suspected gunman approach the school while what sounds like gunfire is going off in the background. 

‘There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site,’ The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District said. 

Videos taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting show mothers frantically running towards the campus to collect their kids. 

The school warned parents to stay away and instead collect their children from a rendezvous point after they had been ‘accounted for’. 

‘Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared.’

The students were holding a day of celebrations, receiving certificates for the end of the school year. 

Dr Hal Harrell, superintendent of Uvalde school district, said that classes had been cancelled for the rest of the school year.

‘School will be closed,’ Harrell told a press conference on Tuesday evening. 

‘The school year is done. All activities are cancelled throughout the district – I know graduation is on everyone’s mind, but we will come to that later.

‘My heart was broken today.

‘We are a small community, and we will need your prayers to get through this.’

Ninety percent of the school’s students are Hispanic and there are some 70 teachers.

It is one many schools in the district that is a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, with the city of Coahuila 220 miles away. The school sits on the outskirts of the city of Uvalde, population 16,000.

Don McLaughlin, mayor of Uvalde, told Fox News that shots were fired off site, and that after shooting one person, the gunman ran to the school where he barricaded himself inside. 

The district said that the city’s civic center will be used as a reunification center and that parents will be able to pick up their children there once everyone is accounted for. 

A mobile morgue was seen arriving at the school on Tuesday afternoon. 

 

Matthew McConaughey has been besieged by tweets in the wake of the shooting. 

‘This is your hometown, these are your people! A word from you now will go further than a word from almost anyone else,’ wrote one person. 

‘Please use your voice and address gun control in Texas. People listen to you,’ wrote another.  

‘I really hope @McConaughey will reconsider his run for Governor after what occurred in his childhood hometown today. It’s time to and his cronies out of office and get real gun control in place NOW!’

McConaughey previously teased a possible Texas gubernatorial run for 2022, but last year announced he wouldn’t proceed with his plans to enter politics.

Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, tweeted that he and his wife are ‘lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.’

Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas, told Fox News that more teachers should carry guns.

‘We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,’ he said, adding that he had ‘never understood that argument’.

‘We can harden these schools. We can create points of access that are difficult to get through.

‘We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. 

‘The reality is that we don’t have the resources to have law enforcement at every school.

‘So it takes time for law enforcement – now matter how prepared, no matter how good they are – to get there. So having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.

‘Nothing is going to work perfectly, but that, in my opinion it’s the best answer to this problem.’ 

But Senator Chris Murphy, a Democratic from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.

‘This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day,’ Murphy said on the Senate floor.

‘I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely,’ he added.

Kamala Harris, the vice president, said: ‘Enough is enough. As a nation, we have to have the courage to take action and understand the nexus between makes for reasonable and sensible public policy to ensure something like this never happens again.’ 

 The deadly violence in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.

On May 14, an 18-year-old white man shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Wearing heavy body armor and wielding an AR-15 rifle, the self-declared white supremacist allegedly livestreamed his attack, having reportedly targeted the store because of the large surrounding African American population.

The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and injuring five.

Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to enact their own restrictions.

The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the ‘monstrous’ shooting before directing her ire at colleagues that have stood in the way of gun reform.

‘Words are inadequate to describe the agony and outrage at the cold-blooded massacre of little schoolchildren and a teacher at Robb Elementary School today,’ Pelosi said in a statement.

‘This monstrous shooting stole the futures of precious children, who will never experience the joys of graduating from school, chasing the career of their dreams, falling in love, even starting a family of their own.’

Referring to the multiple mass shootings in recent weeks, the Democrat continued: ‘Across the nation, Americans are filled with righteous fury in the wake of multiple incomprehensible mass shootings in the span of just days.’

‘This a crisis of existential proportions – for our children and for every American. For too long, some in Congress have offered hollow words after these shootings while opposing all efforts to save lives,’ she said.

‘It is time for all in Congress to heed the will of the American people and join in enacting the House-passed bipartisan, commonsense, life-saving legislation into law.’

Texas elementary school massacre is just the latest in long line of bloody school shootings over the last 10 years 

SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, DECEMBER 2012: 27 DEAD, 2 INJURED 

In December 2012, the deadliest school shooting in America took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. 

Lanza arrived to the school with three guns – a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, and two pistols after killing his mother, Nancy – with whom, he reportedly only communicated via email. 

When he arrived to the school around 9.30am, the doors were locked as part of a new safety feature the school had recently rolled out. He allegedly ‘shot the entrance into the building,’ according to CNN. 

The school psychologist and vice principal went to investigate after hearing ‘popping’ noises and the psychologist was shot by Lanza. 

The elementary school was placed in lockdown and students were ushered into restrooms and closets to hide. 

Lanza moved toward kindergarten and first-grade classrooms first. In one of the classrooms, he shot all 14 kindergarteners and six first-graders. 

By the time law enforcement arrived to the scene, 20 students and six staff members were killed. 

As law enforcement approached the 20-year-old, he shot himself. 

Although his motive is unknown, Lanza’s old writings were discovered years later and shed light into the young man’s mind. He had written to a fellow gamer that he had a ‘scorn for humanity’ and had been ‘desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life.’ 

A child advocate’s for the state of Connecticut also said Lanza had severe mental health problems and suffered from anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder and  was on the autism spectrum. He was also preoccupied with violence, according to CBS News. 

With ease of access to his mother’s weapons and being home-schooled, the advocate said it was ‘proved a recipe for mass murder.’ 

MARYSVILLE PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL, OCTOBER 2014: 4 DEAD, 1 INJURED 

Marysville student Jaylen Fryberg, 17, gathered his friends around a table in the Washington state’s school cafeteria and shot each of them in the head one-by-one to take them to ‘the other side,’  in October 2014. He shot them with a ‘blank stare’ and shot them ‘left to right.’ 

Fryberg had sent a photo of the handgun to a friend just moments before he would open fire, killing four. He told the person he texted to call him before he did ‘the thing.’ 

After shooting the four students as others watched on, he shot himself as a teacher ran toward him, the Washington Post reported. 

The teen had methodically planned the massacre, even leaving a note for his parents with his funeral arrangements and what to do with his assets, if he had any. 

He had texted his father: ‘Read the paper on my bed. Dad, I love you.’ 

Inside the note, he told his parents he wanted to be ‘fully dressed in Camo in my casket’ and all his ‘trust money or whatever goes to my brother.’ 

Fryberg also apologized to his friends’ parents, but said he needed ‘ride or dies with me on the other side.’

‘I LOVE YOU FAMILY! I really do! More then anything,’ he wrote. ‘I needed to do this tho[ugh]…I wasn’t happy. And I need my crew with me too. I’m sorry. I love you.’ 

UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, OCTOBER 2015: 9 DEAD, 9 INJURIED 

Student Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, opened fire in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015 around 10.45am. 

He killed eight students and one teacher before police arrived. Authorities and Mercer engaged in a brief shootout, before Mercer turned the gun on himself and took his own life. 

More weapons were found in his apartment, which he shared with his mother, and he had handed a student a USB drive with his manifesto on it. 

‘It’s pretty well laid out that he was a dejected failure,’ Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at the time. ‘The only thing that I can conclude from it is he was mentally and emotionally ill.’ 

His manifesto detailed a life of a lonely virgin, who self-described himself as the ‘most hated person in the world’ and said he hated black men, whom he said only cared about their ‘penises.’

Mercer also reportedly said he was constantly ‘under siege’ by ‘morons and idiots,’ the Oregonian reported.  

Mercer wrote: ‘What was it that was supposed to happen, what great event was it that was supposed to make me realize how much there was going for me? 

‘But for people like me there is another world, a darker world that welcomes us. For people like us this all that’s left. My success in Hell is assured.’

The young man also reportedly said he was ‘denied’ everything he deserved and likened himself the Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook shooters. 

‘Though we may have been born bad. Society left us no recourse, no way to be good,’ he reportedly wrote.  

‘I have been forced to align myself with demonic forces. What was once an involuntary relationship has now become an alignment, a service. I now serve the demonic Heirarchy(sic). When I die will become one of them. A demon. And I will return to kill again and again.’ 

NORTH PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, APRIL 2017: 2 DEAD, 1 INJURED 

Cedric Anderson, 53, entered the San Bernardino, California, school around 10.30am in April 2017, where his wife Karen Elaine Smith, also 53, worked as a special-education teacher.  

He told administrators he was there to see his wife and walked into her classroom, which was positioned near the office. 

He fired six shots from a Magnum revolver when he entered the classroom, killing his wife and an eight-year-old student and injuring another child. He reloaded the revolver and shot himself. 

Although the motive is unknown, many suspected his wife – who had recently divorced him  – was being abused, according to the San Bernardino Sun.

Since the shooting, her classroom IB, no longer exists. The classroom walls have been knocked down and it is now an open space for students to work on projects. 

The school remodeled its building and outfitted every classroom with tempered glass windows, installed steel doors with locks on the inside, and a door that leads to the outside, which is mandated by law.  

AZTEC HIGH SCHOOL, DECEMBER 2017: 2 DEAD, 0 INJURED 

Former student William Atchison, 21, disguised himself as student and hide in a bathroom with a Glock on the second floor of the New Mexico school, according to Fox News. 

The custodian reported ran down the hallways screaming about an active shooter and telling teachers to go into ‘lockdown.’ 

He killed a male student who walked into the bathroom before killing a girl in the hallway and then turned the gun on himself. 

The shooter had left a manifesto on a USB drive that was found on his body, where he had allegedly wrote: ‘Work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out…’ 

Atchison had been on the FBI’s radar since 2016 after he allegedly asked in a forum: ‘Where to find cheap assault rifles for a mass shooting?’ 

He told investigators he just liked to troll online forums and authorities found that he was not in possession of any weapons at the time after interviewing him at his parent’s house. 

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS – PARKLAND, FEBRUARY 2018: 17 DEAD, 17 INJURIED 

The now-third biggest school shooting in US history happened in February 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day. 

Nikolas Cruz, then 19, shot and killed 14 students and three staff members and injured an additional 17. 

The shooter, who was adopted, shot students with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle. He began shooting students outside of the school before working his way inside, according to NBC News. 

After the shooting, he slipped past authorities by hiding among the crowd running out of the school. 

For years, Cruz was a subject of police attention as his parents had called 911 several times on him for being out of control and had been tripped off to the FBI about concerning behavior, NPR reported. 

Starting when Cruz was 10 years old, his mother reported seeing violent behavior and had called the police after he and his other adopted brother Zach had gotten into a fight. She also reported Cruz had pushed her up against a wall after taking an X-Box game away and he had used a BB gun to shoot a chicken. 

After his mother died, he went to live with a family friend and had reportedly gotten in a fight with their son. 

He told police: ‘The thing is, I lost my mother a couple days ago. So like, I’m dealing with a bunch of things right now. I kind of got mad. And I started punching walls and stuff and a kid came at me and threw me on the ground. And he kicked me out of the house.’ 

The family claimed he put a gun to their son’s head and had done it to his adoptive mother as well before. 

Cruz had also been expelled from two school, was self-harming and had reportedly been diagnosed with depression, NPR reported. 

He pleaded guilty in October 2021 and now faces the death penalty.  

SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL, MAY 2018: 10 DIED, 12 INJURED 

Dimitrios Pagourtzis, then 17, killed 10 and injured 12 others at Santa Fe High School in Texas in May 2018. 

A student said Pagourtzis hid a shotgun and a handgun under his trench coat before opening fire in a first-period art class. 

The then-student told police he did not kill anyone he liked because he wanted them to be able to tell the story, AP reported.  

Authorities say Pagourtzis planned the killings, carried out with weapons owned by his father. Though Pagourtzis allegedly wrote about his intention to carry out the attack, authorities have not indicated a motive for the violence. 

Although the motive is unknown, a student’s mother said her daughter had rejected Pagourtzis romantically and her daughter, Shana Fisher, had made clear that she was not interested in him. 

‘He continued to get more aggressive,’ the mother told AP. ‘She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him.’ 

The incident took place one week before the shooting and it is unclear if that drove Pagourtzis to kill. 

Police also said they found multiple IEDs, pressure cookers, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, propane tanks, and other homemade explosives near the school and parking lot after the shooting. 

He had engaged in a 25-minute shootout with police before surrendering after being injured. 

Pagourtzis is currently awaiting trial. He faces 40 years in prison.  

SAUGUS HIGH SCHOOL, NOVEMBER 2018: 2 DEAD, 3 INJURED 

Nathaniel Berhow, 16, killed two students and injured two others at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, in November 2018. 

Authorities said the attack was planned, but the victims were chosen at random. 

‘It was a planned attack; it was deliberate. He knew how many rounds he had, for example,’ Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said at the time, according to NBC Los Angeles. 

Berhow was dropped off at the school by his mother and was standing in the quad alongside other students. Authorities said he was standing away from students and was still before moving toward the center of the quad, where he dropped his backpack and began firing at students. 

He shot five people in 16 seconds, NBC Los Angeles reported. 

Berhow also shot himself in an attempted suicide and was taken to the hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries. 

The motive for the attack is still unknown.  

OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL, NOVEMBER 2021: 4 DIED, 7 INJURED  

The most recent well-known school shooter is 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, who opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan after a guidance counseling meeting with his parents at the school. 

Four students were killed and seven more people were injured in the shooting. 

Crumbley had a meeting with school administrators, and his mother was contacted via voicemail by the school about her son’s inappropriate ammunition-related  internet search.

According to the prosecutor, the mother and father also failed to ask Ethan if he had his gun with him, or where his gun was, and did not inspect his backpack.

Instead, the teen returned to class and the shooting occurred later.

His parents were also arrested after a large-scale manhunt. James and Jennifer were captured in the basement of a building in Detroit, less than half a mile from the Canadian border. 

All the Crumbleys are being held at the Oakland County Jail. His parents are currently facing trial for four counts of manslaughter and have requested their trial be moved out of Oakland County. 

Ethan is awaiting trial, which is schedule for September, and he faces life in prison.  

Portrait of a killer: Call of Duty-loving shooter, 18, was bullied at school for being poor, creeped out his Wendy’s female co-workers, and lived with his grandmother who he shot at START of rampage after row over not graduating 

By Melissa Koenig and Laurence Dollimore For Dailymail.com

In yet another tragic mass shooting, Salvador Ramos, 18, slaughtered 19 innocent children and two much-loved teachers at Robb Elementary school, in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday before being killed in a shoot out with a Border Patrol officer and local law enforcement. 

It is the second deadliest shooting in US history after the infamous Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 – which saw 26 people killed – and has once again left people asking how someone could commit such a heinous crime. 

As the country tries to make sense of the tragedy, stories about Ramos are beginning to emerge from those who knew him best, painting the picture of loner with a propensity for self-harm and violence, who was from an unstable home, including an alleged drug-using mother.

Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez said in a local television interview that the school shooter was born in North Dakota, but attended high school in Uvalde.

Neighbors and classmates say his behavior spiraled into the bizarre and macabre as he entered his later teenage years, with one friend telling Good Morning America: ‘He had scars on his face and someone asked him, ‘Are you ok?’ and he just said with a smile ‘I did it myself, I liked how it looked.’ 

He began dressing in dark clothes and military boots and used his BB gun to target random people, one local claimed. 

There are around 15,000 residents in Uvalde which sits roughly 80 miles west of San Antonio, around an hour’s drive from the US-Mexico border. 

The would-be mass murderer lived with his grandmother on Hood Street, less than three miles from the Robb Elementary school.

More than one-third of residents in the city live at or barely above the federal poverty line.

According to Ramos’ neighbor Ruben Flores, 41, the shooter and his mother would often have screaming matches, with police being called to the home on multiple occasions. 

In since deleted Instagram videos, Ramos had allegedly filmed his mother interacting with police. 

Classmate Nadia Reyes claimed: ‘He’d call his mom a b***h and say she wanted to kick him out… He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.’

Flores, meanwhile, told the Washington Post how he had tried to be a father figure to Ramos but that the situation at home only worsened as he got older. 

Jeremiah Munoz, an alumnus from the local high school who used to play Xbox games with Ramos, also told the New York Times he would often hear him arguing with his mother through the microphone – and his mother would scream back at him, telling him he needed to go to school and he was doing nothing with his life.

Munoz said Ramos would often leave his mother’s house and stay with his grandmother for several days after a big fight – and over the past year he has been spending more and more time with his grandmother. 

Ramos’ grandmother, who owned the house on Hood Street, was reportedly in the process of evicting the mother over her drug use in the days before Tuesday’s killing spree. Flores said Ramos had moved into his grandmother’s home across town some months earlier.

There, his grandfather, Ronaldo Reyes, 72, said he lived in a front room and slept on a mattress on the floor. Reyes told ABC News he had no idea his grandson purchased two AR-15s nor that he kept them in the house.

As a convicted felon, Reyes is not allowed to have guns inside his home, he said, and if he knew Ramos was keeping weapons there he said he would have turned in his grandson.

But, Reyes said, he did not think his grandson was dangerous, noting that he had tried to encourage his grandson to attend school, but he would just shrug in response.

‘These kids these days think they know everything,’ he said. 

Now, Reyes said he is shocked and does not understand how his grandson could have committed such a heinous crime – saying he did not know how to drive and did not have a drivers’ license. 

He also wondered how his grandson would have purchased the weapons, or if he was trained on how to use them. 

On the morning of the shooting, Reyes said, the suspect and his grandmother got into a ‘minor argument’ about a cellphone bill, but it was nothing significant. 

Still, she would be Ramos’ first victim on Tuesday, after Reyes shot her in the forehead.

The 66-year-old – who has not yet been publicly named – is now undergoing surgery, and Reyes said he believes she will survive.

By all accounts, Ramos had been a relatively normal child until the eighth grade, with his ‘best friend’ from that period, Stephen Garcia, branding him the ‘nicest’ and ‘shyest kid’ who ‘just needed to break out of his shell.’ 

Reportedly Ramos was bullied for a stutter and lisp. Classmates also allegedly called him with gay slurs.  At one point, he uploaded a picture of himself wearing eyeliner.

‘He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,’ Garcia told the Post, ‘Over social media, over gaming, over everything.’

When Garcia had to move away, Ramos began to change, dressing in all black and donning large military boots. 

In his early childhood, friends claim, he had been nicknamed ‘pelon’, meaning bald in Spanish, for his incredibly short hair. But in an apparent bid to leave those days behind, he began to grow it long. 

He was then branded an ’emo’ or ‘alternative’ at school, where he got into multiple fist fights before increasingly playing truant. 

During the last few months of his life, Ramos was working at a Wendy’s and was hardly in attendance at school. He was not set to graduate this year, a fact he seemed to despise. 

One neighbor told local news channel Newsy that he witnessed Ramos arguing with his grandmother on Tuesday, claiming he was ‘angry that he did not graduate’. 

He said the grandmother then screamed: ‘He shot me, he shot me’, before Ramos ‘zoomed down the street’ and crashed his pick-up truck before embarking on his killing spree – which happened to take place just one day after his colleagues had graduated. 

As he morphed into a ‘different person’ into his later teen years, one local claimed he would ride around at night with a friend firing a BB gun at random passersby. He is also said to have egged people’s cars.   

He is said to have found it hard to hold onto friendships, often ‘taking things too far’ with ‘weird’ comments. 

One friend, who wanted to join the Marines, said he cut off Ramos after the killer told him he only wanted to join the force ‘so he could kill people.’         

A former classmate, who asked not to be identified, also told CNN he and Ramos were somewhat ‘close’ and used to play Xbox together. The killer was a fan of the shooting and combat game Call of Duty. 

On his since removed Instagram account, Ramos is believed to have shared a photo of two AR15-style rifles just three days before the massacre, while the bio on his TikTok page chillingly read: ‘Kids be scared irl’ (in real life). 

Meanwhile, his Wendy’s co-workers told the Daily Beast that he had an ‘aggressive streak’ and would send inappropriate messages to female employees. They also branded him ‘quiet’ and ‘anti-social’. 

One said: ‘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 same source claimed there were multiple videos of Ramos fighting people with boxing gloves at a local park. 

‘He’d take them around with him,’ they claimed. 

In the hours leading up to the killings, the shooter reportedly showed off his guns to an LA-based woman via his Instagram page, taunting that he was ‘about to do’ something. 

When the woman asked what, he said: ‘I’ll tell you before 11.’ He began shooting at noon.  

‘As soon as he made entry into the school he started shooting children, teachers, whoever was in his way, he was shooting everybody,’ Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez said.

‘This is just evil’, an Uvalde resident told the New York Times, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to know a lot of these kids that were killed.’

Another local, Adolfo Hernandez, told the same paper that his nephew had been in a classroom near where the shooting took place.

‘He actually witnessed his little friend get shot in the face,’ Hernandez said. The friend, he said, ‘got shot in the nose and he just went down, and my nephew was devastated.’

Speaking anonymously, one classmate said Ramos had begun showing up to class less and less as other kids bullied him over his clothes and his family’s financial situation.

‘He would, like, not go to school…and he just, like, slowly dropped out. He barely came to school,’ the friend said. 

After the North Dakota native graduated from high school, the friend said they became even more distant from each other, but would occasionally message each other on Xbox. 

‘He would message me here and there,’ he said. 

Four days prior to Tuesday’s shooting, Ramos reportedly sent his friend a picture of the AR and a backpack full of 5.56 rounds. 

‘[He had] probably like seven [magazines],’ he said. ‘I was like: ‘Bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like: ‘Don’t worry about it.” 

Under a new Texas law passed in September, those aged 18-21 could buy guns if they had a protective order, because they were at risk of family violence, stalking, prostitution or sex trafficking.

The law also removed the requirement for a permit for a handgun. Rifles were already permitted in Texas without licenses.

In the days leading up to the massacre, Ramos told his friend that he ‘looked very different now.’  

‘You wouldn’t recognize me,’ he messaged less than a week ago. 

Ramos’s social media was full of photos of his new guns, which he bought on his 18th birthday, state senator Roland Gutierrez said.  

Ramos also messaged a Los Angeles-based woman on May 12 on Instagram, tagging her in a photo of the guns.

‘You gonna repost my gun pics,’ @sal8dor_ direct messaged her.

‘What your guns gotta do with me,’ [sic] she replied on Friday.

‘Just wanted to tag you,’ he said back.

Then at 5:43am on Tuesday, @salv8dor_ messaged her and said: ‘I’m about to’.

The girl asked ‘about to what’ to which he answered: ‘I’ll tell you before 11.’

He said he would 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.

‘Be grateful I tagged you,’ he wrote. 

She replied: ‘No it’s just scary,’ adding: ‘I barely know you and you tag me in a picture with some guns?’

His last message at 9:16am on Tuesday was ‘Ima air out’.

The shooting started around 11:32am.  The woman reacted with horror when she learnt what he had done.

‘He’s a stranger I know nothing about him he decided to tag me in his gun post,’ she wrote.

‘I’m so sorry for the victims and their families I really don’t know what to say.’

She then added: ‘The only reason I responded to him was because I was afraid of him I wish I stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime. I didn’t know.’

When an Instagram user asked if she was his girlfriend, she replied: ‘I don’t know him and I don’t even live in Texas.’

He largely dropped out, and took the job at Wendy’s nearby, where co-workers remember him as quiet.

Adrian Mendes, evening manager at the Wendy’s, said Ramos ‘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,’ Mendes told CNN.

‘He just worked, got paid, and came in to get his check.’

Mendes said that he did not know Ramos well – he was already employed when Ramos began in February – and didn’t see him most of the time because they were on different shifts. 

Ramos worked from 11am to 4pm or 5pm, five days a week for about a year, according to the New York Times. He then quit about one month ago.

Ramos was shot and killed by law enforcement at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, after he had murdered 21 people.