The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-26)

A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022

Texas school shooting

Across Texas community, an excruciating toll takes shape

cut brutally short.
The shooting was the country’s
deadliest at a school since a gun-
man killed 26 people — 20 of
them children — at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown,
Conn., in 2012. Nearly a decade
later, a similar horror reached
this small city about 80 miles
west of San Antonio.
Officials identified the gun-
man as 18-year-old Salvador Ro-
lando Ramos, and said he was
shot and killed by law enforce-
ment officials. Investigators were
still piecing together key details
about the attack, including
whether the gunman had any
connections to the school, offi-
cials said Wednesday.
In addition to the victims who
were killed, 17 others suffered
wounds that did not appear life-
threatening, authorities said.
As portraits of the victims
slowly took shape and residents
grappled with anguish and loss,
investigators also provided new
details Wednesday about the
gunman. He had turned 18 on
May 16, just eight days before the
shooting, and quickly purchased
two semiautomatic rifles and 375
rounds of ammunition, officials
say.
On Tuesday, the gunman shot
his grandmother in the face and
fled her home, crashing her vehi-
cle near Robb Elementary. His
66-year-old grandmother con-
tacted police, officials said, and
she was taken to a San Antonio
hospital, where she remained in
critical condition on Wednesday.
A woman who identified her-
self as Ramos’s mother said in a
brief phone conversation
Wednesday afternoon that she
did not want to talk about her
son. Her mother, the gunman’s
grandmother, was expected to
make a full recovery, the woman
said.
After shooting his grandmoth-
er, the gunman rammed into a
nearby railing, which spurred a
911 call from a resident who said
the driver apparently had a rifle,
said Travis Considine, a spokes-
man for the Texas Department of
Public Safety.
The attacker encountered a
school police officer and shot and
injured him before heading in-
side, officials said. When two
Uvalde police officers showed up
and tried to get inside, Considine
said, they exchanged gunfire with
the attacker and were both
wounded.
The gunman then went to a
fourth-grade classroom, barri-
caded himself and carried out
“most, if not all, of his damage,”
Considine said.
A Border Patrol team respond-
ed to the scene and shot the
gunman, killing him, officials
said. Border Patrol agents, in-
cluding some from its elite tacti-
cal unit, led the phalanx of the
law enforcement officers that
made their way into the class-
room and fired at the gunman,
according to two federal law en-
forcement official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to
provide preliminary details. The
gunman had been firing at police
out the windows, then fired at the

UVALDE FROM A

agents as they stormed the class-

room to confront him, one official

said.

The exact timetable of the car-

nage — including how long the

gunman was inside and precisely

when he fired the fatal shots —

remained unclear Wednesday.

After the shooting, one of the

gunman’s rifles was found with

him and the other in the vehicle

he had driven to the scene.

Abbott said the attack could

have been even worse, saying that

law enforcement officials ran

toward the gunfire and “were

able to save lives. Unfortunately,

not enough.”

The justice of the peace — an

official akin to a county coroner

— who is leading the inquest in

the case said Wednesday that

officials planned to release vic-

tims’ bodies to their families by

Thursday. They also planned to

conduct an autopsy of the gun-

man after finishing work on the

victims, he said.

People who knew the gunman

have said he lashed out violently

and acted strangely over the

years. They also said he had a

difficult home life and had been

bullied at school.

The gunman, Abbott said, ap-

parently had no criminal history

but may have had a juvenile rec-

ord. That was still being deter-

mined, the governor said. Abbott

also said the gunman had “no

known mental health history.”

Abbott, an avowed supporter

of gun rights, emphasized mental

health in his remarks Wednesday.

He said law enforcement offi-

cials, community leaders and

others told him that there was “a

problem with mental health ill-

ness in this community” and a

significant need for more support

on that front.

Despite public perception and

misleading commentary from

many elected officials, decades of

research have found that people

with mental illness are responsi-

ble for a tiny fraction of interper-

sonal and other gun violence.

Abbott described the social

media messages as the lone warn-

ing of planned violence. Before

the shooting, Abbott said, “the

only information that was known

in advance” came from those

messages.

According to Abbott, the at-

tacker posted about shooting his

grandmother and then, less than

15 minutes before arriving at

Robb, posted about intending “to

shoot an elementary school.”

Though Abbott had said the

gunman’s plans were posted on

Facebook, a spokesman for par-

ent company Meta described

them in a tweet as “private one-

to-one text messages” found after

the shooting.

Another spokesman for the so-

cial media giant, which also oper-

ates Instagram and WhatsApp,

both of which have messaging

features, later clarified that the

messages were sent privately but

declined to say which of its social

networks were used.

The rampage, which occurred

10 days after a gunman killed 10

people at a grocery store in Buf-

falo, underscored America’s fail-

ure to curb the seemingly unend-

ing epidemic of mass shootings in

which people have been cut down

in schools, houses of worship,

movie theaters, nightclubs, bars,

music festivals and other loca-

tions.

This latest tragedy also high-

lighted the agonizing toll gun

violence has taken on students in

America, from the Sandy Hook

attack nearly a decade ago to the

shooting rampages four years ago

that left 27 people dead in Park-

land, Fla., and Santa Fe, Tex.

Since the Columbine High

School massacre in 1999, more

than 311,000 students have expe-

rienced gun violence at school,

according to a Washington Post

analysis.

“This didn’t hit close to home,”

Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old

son Dylan was killed in Sandy

Hook, said of the shooting in

Uvalde. “This is home.”

Gun violence has also risen in

America in recent years. In 2020,

firearms killed more children

and adolescents than car acci-

dents, long the leading cause of

death for people in that age

range, a Washington Post analy-

sis found.

This latest shooting fueled yet

another debate over gun-control

measures, which reverberated

from Capitol Hill to Uvalde. Beto

O’Rourke, a former Texas con-

gressman and the Democratic gu-

bernatorial nominee running

against Abbott this year, inter-

rupted the governor’s news brief-

ing to say that he was “doing

nothing” and “offering us noth-

ing.”

O’Rourke was escorted out

while officials gathered near Ab-

bott admonished him. Abbott did

not address O’Rourke by name

but raised his voice while admon-

ishing people to “put aside per-

sonal agendas, think of some-

body other than ourselves.”

Speaking to journalists after-

ward, O’Rourke said, “We owe the

children in the next school where

a gunman’s going to walk in with

an AR-15 unless we intervene and

stop that — we owe them some-

thing.”

Across Uvalde, the toll of the

shooting was still taking excruci-

ating shape. Ricardo Rodriguez,

whose son left the school early

following an awards assembly be-

fore the shooting, was one of the

fortunate fathers. So he sought to

comfort his friends, accompany-

ing some to the town civic center

where they were told to report.

He watched parents go, one by

one, from a large room into a

smaller one across the hall. That’s

where the screaming happened.

“Not my son!” they said, Rodri-

guez recalled. “Not my daughter!”

Officials led the broken fami-

lies out a back door as they col-

lapsed into one another’s arms.

“At that point, there’s no con-

soling,” he said.

The victims included Xavier

Lopez, a 10-year-old who gleeful-

ly danced for his mother’s TikTok

account, and Jose Flores, a 10-

year-old who had just received an

award for making the honor roll.

Two of the victims were players

on a local basketball team that

calls itself the Spurs, after the

National Basketball Association

franchise in San Antonio. Ellie

Garcia and Alexandria “Lexi” Ru-

bio “were kind, sweet, funny girls

and made us proud,” said Erica

Mena, whose husband coached

the team.

Mena’s daughter is also in the

fourth grade and on the team.

When the gunman entered the

classroom next door to hers, her

teacher told students to stay at

“level zero, please” — meaning to

not make a sound. Mena said her

daughter escaped by crawling out

a window.

Irma Garcia, a fourth-grade

teacher, was just finishing up her

23rd year as a teacher, all of them

at Robb Elementary. Her stu-

dents “were her lifeblood,” said

Jose Garcia, 19, one of her sons.

Authorities confirmed that she

was dead on Tuesday evening, her

family said.

Police officials told her family

that she had died trying to pro-

tect her students, said John Mar-

tinez, 21, one of Garcia’s nephews.

“I want her to be remembered

as someone who sacrificed her

life and put her life on the line for

her kids,” Martinez said.

For Felix Rubio, the grief came

from all sides. His brother-in-

law’s sister, Eliahana Torres, was

killed. So was his father’s cousin,

Irma Garcia, the teacher. And he

lost his niece, Ellie Garcia, the

basketball player.

The family did not learn Ellie

was killed until a little before

10 p.m., hours after they asked

her father — Steven Garcia, Ru-

bio’s brother — for a DNA sample.

Rubio said his brother went into

the small room to hear the news

and came out a destroyed man.

“I don’t even know what to tell

my brother,” Rubio sobbed.

Javier Cazares said he was run-

ning an errand a half-mile away

from his 9-year-old daughter

Jacklyn's elementary school

when heard about a commotion

near the school.

Within minutes, Cazares said

he and at least four other men

who had children in the school

were huddled near the building’s

front door. Then they started

hearing gunfire coming from the

building, he said.

The fathers heard the gunfire,

and police told them to move

back, Cazares said.

“We didn’t care about us; we

wanted to storm the building,” he

said. “We were saying, ‘Let’s go,’

because that is how worried we

were, and we wanted to get our

babies out.”

It wasn’t until several hours

later, after Jacklyn never

emerged from the building, that

Cazares learned she had been

shot. She later died at the hospi-

tal.

Berman reported from Washington.

Naomi Nix, Rachel Lerman, John

Woodrow Cox, Nick Miroff, Nick

Anderson, Lenny Bernstein, Dan

Keating, Joanna Slater, Shawn

Boburg, Meryl Kornfield, Hannah

Knowles, Marisa Iati, Alice Crites,

Razzan Nakhlawi, Monika Mather,

María Luisa Paúl, Karina Elwood,

Marissa J. Lang, Perry Stein, Jennifer

Jenkins and Magda Jean-Louis

contributed to this report.

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Mourners attend a vigil Wednesday night in Uvalde, Tex., for the 19 children and two adults slain at Robb Elementary School.

“We owe the children in the next school where a

gunman’s going to walk in ... unless we intervene

and stop that — we owe them something.”

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor

BY NAOMI NIX

AND RACHEL LERMAN

Facebook said Wednesday that
the Texas gunman sent direct
messages regarding his attack on
one of its platforms, something
the social media giant learned
after the school shooting.
Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news
conference that the gunman
posted his plans on the social
media site before the attack. The
gunman, who authorities have
identified as Salvador Rolando
Ramos, 18, wrote, “I’m going to
shoot my grandmother” and “I’m
going to shoot an elementary
school” shortly before the attack,
according to Abbott.
But in a tweet, Facebook
spokesman Andy Stone said,
“The messages Gov. Abbott de-
scribed were private one-to-one
text messages that were discov-
ered after the terrible tragedy
occurred.”
Another company spokesman,
Joe Osborne, clarified that the
messages were sent privately but
declined to say which of its social
networks were used. Facebook,
which was renamed Meta last

year, also operates Instagram and

private messaging service Whats-

App.

Nineteen children and two

teachers were killed Tuesday at

Robb Elementary School in Uval-

de when the gunman opened fire.

Ramos first shot his grandmother

in the face, Abbott said, and she

was airlifted to a hospital.

Ramos’s private social media

messages came to light Wednes-

day as the shooting investigation

continued. Social media plat-

forms have been emphasizing

private messaging for years, and

several sites have rolled out fea-

tures where users can post tem-

porary statuses or stories that

disappear from public profiles

after a certain amount of time.

Facebook, along with other

tech companies, has been at odds

with law enforcement agencies

around the world who have been

urging the social media giant to

drop its plans to implement end-

to-end encryption on its messag-

ing services because they argue it

would hamper their ability to

spot criminal activity. The com-

pany plans to expand encryption,

which prevents third parties

from being able to read the con-

tents of messages, to Facebook

and Instagram. It already uses it

on WhatsApp.

It’s unclear if Ramos made

public posts that could have hint-

ed at the shooting on any social

media platform. The Uvalde Con-

solidated Independent School

District has previously used an

artificial intelligence-backed pro-

gram to scan social media posts

for potential threats years before

the attack.

The school district said in a

document for the 2019-

school year that it used Social

Sentinel to monitor all social me-

dia with a “connection to Uvalde

as a measure to identify any

possible threats that might be

made against students and or

staff within the school district.”

It’s unclear whether the pro-

gram was in use at the time of the

shooting. Navigate360, which op-

erates Social Sentinel, didn’t re-

spond to a request for comment.

Social Sentinel bills itself as an

artificial intelligence-backed

software that can scan conversa-

tions in organizations’ emails and

public social media posts to iden-

tify people who may about to

inflict violence against them-

selves or others.

Ramos appeared to have been

active on Instagram previously. A

high school classmate, Nadia

Reyes, told The Washington Post

that he posted an Instagram story

two months ago in which he

screamed at his mother, who he

said was trying to kick him out of

their home.

“He posted videos on his Insta-

gram where the cops were there

and he’d call his mom a b---- and

say she wanted to kick him out,”

Reyes said. “He’d be screaming

and talking to his mom really

aggressively.”

Social media company Snap

said Wednesday that it has sus-

pended an account that may have

been connected to Ramos and

that it is also working with law

enforcement.

So far, what is known of the

gunman’s social media trail

doesn’t appear to show that he

broadcast his plans to a large

group of people, said Emerson T.

Brooking, senior fellow at the

Atlantic Council’s Digital Foren-

sic Research Lab, which research-

es how information spreads on-

line. Instead, it appears the gun-

man sent messages, sometimes

cryptically, to individuals.

That shows the mismatch be-

tween services that scan publicly

available social media posts and

the way many people now com-

municate online, Brooking said.

“There’s been such a shift

toward closed messaging plat-

forms and toward ephemeral

messaging,” he said.

Gunman’s postings bring fresh scrutiny to plans for end-to-end encryption

SERGIO FLORES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) speaks at a news conference at Uvalde High School on Wednesday. Abbott

said the gunman in Tuesday’s school shooting posted his plans on social media before the attack.

Online activity so far

shows that shooter didn’t

broadcast plans publicly