Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old gunman who massacred 19 students and two teachers, wrote “I’m going to shoot an elementary school,” on Facebook minutes before he opened fire, Texas authorities said Wednesday.
The high school dropout first wrote “I’m going to shoot my grandmother,” 30 minutes before arriving at the Robb Elementary School in the border town of Uvalde, according to Gov. Gregg Abbott, who led a press conference Wednesday in which disturbing new details of Tuesday’s carnage were disclosed.
Ramos then wrote a second message. “I shot my grandmother.” Then, 15 minutes before he pulled the trigger on an AR-15 rifle in a crowded classroom, he wrote, “I am going to shoot an elementary school.”
Abbott described the writings as social media posts, but a Facebook spokesperson said they were included in a direct message to another party. The company is assisting the investigation, the spokesperson said.
All of Ramos’ social media accounts had apparently been erased as of late Tuesday.
Wednesday’s press conference was briefly halted as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke stepped forward to tell the Republican incumbent, “This is on you.” The shootings were “totally predictable,” said O’Rourke, a former congressman from the area and a staunch gun control supporter. “You are doing nothing,” he told Abbott.
A Texas official onstage called O’Rourke a “sick son of b***h and an “a*****e” before the candidate was escorted out by law enforcement.
The tense rhetoric echoed around the country as horrified political leaders demanded tougher gun laws to combat yet another mass shooting in America.
ConnecticutSen. Chris Murphypleaded Wednesday during an emotional speech on the Senate floor, “Why? Why are we here? If not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through. What Uvalde is going through,” he said, referring to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
Tuesday’s slaughter is the worst school shooting since then.
ActorMatthew McConaughey, who is from Uvalde, posted on Twitter, “Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us.”
“This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better,” he wrote.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said, “We know from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” he told MSNBC. “Inevitably, when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work.”
Gov. Abbott also provided Wednesday a more detailed timeline of Tuesday’s shooting. After Ramos shot his grandmother, she was able to stumble across the street and phone 911, he said. Ramos left the home he shared with his grandmother in her car, and crashed it outside the elementary school, Abbott said.
Carrying a backpack and the long rifle he had recently legally purchased, Ramos was able to get past a school resource officer who tried to question him, the governor said.
Ramos then marched down a short hallway and into a fourth-grade classroom, where he barricaded himself inside and began shooting.
Officers arrived quickly and traded gunfire with the shooter from an adjoining classroom, officials said. A tactical team of federal and area law enforcement then arrived and were able to storm the room, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
An unidentified Border Patrol agent shot the gunman dead, Abbott said.
The incident lasted from 30 minutes to an hour, authorities said.
One sheriff’s deputy lost his daughter in the massacre, Abbott said. Three law enforcement officials who were shot during the rampage are all in good condition, he said.
There was more political fallout as plans moved ahead for a scheduled National Rifle Association convention to be held Friday through Sunday in Houston. The massive pro-gun lobby will be attended by former President Donald Trump. Also scheduled to speak are Abbott and Cruz.
Abbott side-stepped a question at Wednesday’s press conference when asked if he still planned to attend the event in light of the mass shooting.
“I’m living moment to moment,” he replied. The governor said little about changing gun laws and instead stressed that mass shootings were “mental health issues.”
He claimed gun crackdowns in other states didn’t always work. “There are more people who are shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in Texas schools,” he said.
“The ability of an 18-year-old to buy a long gun has been in place in the state of Texas for more than 60 years,” Abbott said. “Why is it that for the majority of those 60 years, we did not have school shootings? And why is it that we do now?
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” the governor said.