Governor Greg Abbott stated on Wednesday that the Texas school shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers wrote in a post online just minutes before the assault that he was going to open fire in an elementary school, as terrible new revelations of the atrocity surfaced, Reuters reports.
The gunman, who was shot and killed by police after his spree, had sent a message on Tuesday claiming he was planning to shoot his grandmother, in addition to another post online that confirmed the allegation, Abbott said at a press conference.
The suspect’s grandmother was shot in the face before the shooter left their shared house and assaulted the school, but she survived and contacted the cops.
According to officials, the Texas school shooter, Salvador Ramos, 18, offered no other indication that he was preparing to perpetrate the bloodiest school shooting in the United States in over a decade.
He crashed his car outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, some 80 miles west of San Antonio, fleeing the killing of his grandma, then managed to elude a school police officer before dashing inside.
According to authorities, no gunshots were exchanged at that time. However, officials provided little specifics about the incident, which is expected to be the subject of further investigation, other than to state that when the suspect noticed the officer, he dropped a backpack full of ammo and raced toward the school.
Ramos then went inside the school through the rear entrance, armed with an AR-15-style weapon, and proceeded to a fourth-grade classroom, where he shot all of the victims. Authorities say he bought two firearms and 375 rounds of ammo lawfully just days before the massacre.
Meanwhile, police encircled the facility and broke windows to assist the children and employees in escaping. Agents from the United States Border Patrol also arrived and entered the facility to engage the gunman, with one agent being injured “in the crossfire,” according to homeland security authorities.
Ramos, a high school dropout with no criminal background or mental condition, was eventually shot and killed by police.
According to Abbott, 17 persons had non-life-threatening injuries. According to Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Chris Olivarez, the wounded included “several youngsters” who survived the shooting in their school.
The governor claimed that the gunman made his online remarks on Facebook, while spokesmen for Facebook’s parent firm, Meta Platforms, stated these were private one-on-one chats uncovered after the incident. The business wouldn’t identify who got the messages or which of Meta’s platforms, such as Messenger or Instagram, were used to deliver them.
Victims’ families used social media to express their grief at the loss of children who never returned home from school.
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