As the dust begins to settle around the devastating Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that took place yesterday afternoon, new information regarding the suspected gunman is beginning to come to light — and to say that it’s deeply disturbing would be the understatement of this century.
Salvador Rolando Ramos an 18-year-old high school student shot and critically wounded his own grandmother yesterday, before fleeing in a vehicle that he crashed near Robb Elementary School. Ramos then proceeded to get out of his vehicle and enter the elementary school, where he proceeded to go on a shooting spree inside of a 4th-grade classroom — gunning down and killing 19 innocent children and 2 teachers before he was fatally shot by law enforcement officials.
Reports have indicated that Ramos used high-powered weapons that he had purchased this month, just days after his 18th birthday.
Now, the Washington Post reports that those close to the elementary school shooter had been growing increasingly concerned with the teen’s behavior in the days and weeks leading up to the horrendous massacre, but were still brutally shocked to learn how far Ramos had gone.
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Stephen Garcia, who had been friends with Ramos around 8th grade, told the publication, “I couldn’t even think, I couldn’t even talk to anyone. I just walked out of class, really upset, you know, bawling my eyes out, because I never expected him to hurt people.”
“I think he needed mental help,” Garcia went on to add, “and more closure with his family, and love.”
Garcia, who moved to a different area in TX than his fellow classmate turned school shooter after his mother had to relocate for her job, claimed that Ramos was consistently bullied by his classmates over his stutter and lisp.
“He just started being a different person,” Ramos’ former friend and classmate explained. “He kept getting worse and worse, and I don’t even know.”
The Post reports that Ramos recently dropped out of high school and began to wear all black clothing and military-style boots. One of the shooter’s longtime friends Santos Valdez Jr. told the publication that he had begun to notice similar changes in Ramos recently, such as the time he showed up at a local park to play basketball with his face covered in cuts. Valdez says Ramos originally blamed the numerous cuts on a cat.
“Then he told me the truth, that he’d cut up his face with knives over and over and over,” Valdez revealed. “I was like, ‘You’re crazy, bro, why would you do that?'”
According to Valdez, Ramos told him he did it simply for fun. The shooter’s former friend also told the publication that Ramos would often drive around at night with other friends and shoot random people with a BB gun and egg cars. Eventually, the teen began to post photos of automatic rifles on social media accounts — with photos of the nature posted as recently as four days ago — as well as detailed accounts of his alleged troubled home life.
“He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there and he’d call his mom a b*tch and say she wanted to kick him out,” Nadia Reyes, a former classmate of Ramos’ said. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”
Reyes, as well as multiple other individuals close to the shooter’s family, told the Post that Ramos’ mother was a heavy drug user and the teen had moved in with his grandmother several months ago. Sources say that the teen’s grandmother was in the process of evicting Ramos’ mother from a house she was renting to her.
Read the full report from the Washington Post here.
Featured image via screen capture
