THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
Texas school shootinghad shared in private social me-
dia messages early Tuesday. The
first item was to kill his grand-
mother, who lives near the
school. He shot her in the face,
authorities said, then left her for
dead as he drove off in her truck.
“I shot my grandmother,” Ramos
wrote in an update. The next
threat, according to the messag-
es, was to “shoot an elementary
school.” Within minutes of press-
ing send, shortly after 11:30 a.m.,
Ramos was barricaded inside a
classroom with the 19 students
and two teachers he would kill.
Those are the central elements
of the timeline, pieced together
from law enforcement state-
ments, witness accounts and so-
cial media posts by families of
victims. In the hours after the
shooting, associates of Ramos
shared disturbing exchanges or
observations about him that sug-
gested he was in a downward
spiral, with a miserable home
life, no chance of graduating with
his senior class and a history of
being bullied for his speech and
attire.
Still, much of how events un-
folded remains unclear, includ-
ing whether authorities missed
warning signs or could have
intervened earlier to prevent Ra-
mos from reaching the class-
room. Likewise, talk of motives
remains speculative, with Te xas
officials invoking “mental ill-
ness” and biblical notions of
good and evil to make sense of
the violence.
On May 12, Ramos began mes-
saging a California girl via Insta-
gram, asking if she would repost
photos of his gun. The teen, who
has since shared the exchanges
publicly, described the messages
as scary and strange because she
didn’t know Ramos.
Early Tuesday, hours before
his attack, Ramos again mes-
saged the girl, writing, “I’m about
to” without finishing the
thought. He told her he had “a lil
secret” he wanted to share. She
blew him off, saying she was sick
and might be asleep. “Ima air
out,” he wrote, a slang term that
means to shoot a group of people,
or “air out” a space. By the time
the girl responded to his final
message to her, Ramos probably
was dead, according to the au-
thorities’ timeline that says he
was killed around 1 p.m.
O n Tuesday morning, Miguel
Cerrillo’s 11-year-old daughter
Miah arrived late to school after
a doctor’s appointment. Less
than an hour later, the shooting
began. When the parents heard
the news, Cerrillo said, his wife
got to the school first to check on
their two daughters. He said his
wife watched parents trying to
break windows to help students
escape.
When he arrived just after
noon, Cerrillo said, he joined a
crowd of law enforcement offi-
cers, journalists and a growing
group of terrified parents. Some
time later, he saw an officer exit
the school carrying two children.
One of them was Miah, alive but
covered in blood. She was loaded
onto a yellow school bus.
“I panicked,” Cerrillo said, de-
scribing how he ran toward the
bus but was prevented from
retrieving his daughter. They
could only speak through the
window, with Miah describing
some of the violence she wit-
nessed. Cerrillo said his daughter
saw her teacher, Eva Mireles,
shot and the phone slip from her
teacher’s hand. Miah grabbed it
and called 911.
One of her classmates also was
shot, Cerrillo’s daughter said,
and bleeding. She decided to lie
on top of the girl so the gunman
would think they were both dead.
At first her friend was still
breathing, but she died before
help arrived, Miah said, accord-
ing to Cerrillo’s account.
His daughter’s left side, from
her neck all the way down her
back, was lacerated by small
bullet fragments, and her hair
was singed by gunfire. At Uvalde
Memorial Hospital, doctors dis-
infected and bandaged the cuts
but decided against removing
the fragments. Miah was dis-
charged late Tuesday evening
and spent the night seized with
fear, telling her father to get his
gun because “he’s going to come
get us.”
On Wednesday, the parents
took her to another medical
checkup and then to Sacred
Heart Catholic Church in search
of peace. They lit a candle. Two
priests “prayed over her and
prayed over us,” Cerrillo said. He
said he still hadn’t come to terms
with the tragedy.
“We figured Uvalde was safe,”
he said. “Now we know it’s not
safe.”
The latest revelations show
the horror of a massacre so big in
SHOOTING FROM A
a town so small. T he daughter of
a sheriff’s deputy was among the
dead. A cumbia DJ, an aviation
mechanic and a pastor were all
grieving slain children. Two
members of a girls’ basketball
team were killed and another
injured. One Uvalde man lost
three relatives in the shooting.
In a ddition to the dead, at l east
17 people were wounded or in-
jured, according to state authori-
ties.
On Wednesday morning,
Cathy Gonzalez did what she
does every day — take people’s
orders for coffee, sodas and tacos
at Ofelia’s and cash them out —
but one thing was missing.
“These kids, we knew them.
We know their parents, we know
their grandparents,” Gonzalez
said. “We’d see them every day.”
Mireles, the slain teacher, “was
a regular,” Gonzalez said. So was
Mireles’ husband, a police officer
who works at the high school.
Other victims came in often, and
Gonzalez said she often gave
them quarters for the restau-
rant’s gum ball machines.
“We bought their plate sales
for baseball teams, or whatever
fundraisers for school they had
going on,” she said. The shooter
“hurt all of us.”
According to the timeline au-
thorities offered publicly, a first
alert came from Ramos’s 66-
year-old grandmother, who sur-
vived and was able to call police.
She remains in critical condition
after surgery. A woman who
identified herself as Salvador Ra-
mos’s mother said in a brief
phone conversation that the
grandmother was expected to
recover.
Within minutes of shooting
his grandmother, Ramos had
driven the couple of blocks to
Robb Elementary, where stu-
dents and people in the neigh-
borhood were on lunch break.
O ne lingering question is‘We figured Uvalde was safe. Now we know it’s not safe.’
when exactly the shooting began.
Authorities agree that the gun-
man was dead by 1 p.m. but have
offered conflicting accounts as to
whether the attack began around
11:30 a.m. or closer to noon. By
11:43 a.m., the school announced
on Facebook that it was under
lockdown, citing gunshots in the
area. “The students and staff are
safe in the building,” it said.
In public transmissions on a
radio channel used by local EMS
workers, someone said at 11:
a.m. that a lieutenant had re-
quested a response to the area of
the school. As the response was
discussed, one official was heard
telling first responders: “Please,
just stay back.”
The Post reviewed recordings
of the channel that were pub-
lished on the website Broadcasti-
fy. The public channel for EMS
did not capture the transmis-
sions for all law enforcement at
the scene but indicated when
information was relayed to local
EMS crews.
When the attacker crashed the
truck, it prompted a 911 call from
a resident who added that the
driver apparently had a rifle, said
Travis Considine, spokesman for
the Te xas Department of Public
Safety. The gunman encountered
a school police officer and “they
exchange gunfire,” Considinesaid, with the shooter wounding
the officer and heading inside.
The side entrance to the s chool
should have been locked, but it
was unclear whether it was or if
Ramos forced it open.
Two Uvalde police officers
then showed up, Considine said,
and tried to get inside, exchang-
ing more gunfire with Ramos.
Both officers were wounded, he
said. The attacker then went to a
fourth-grade classroom, where
he barricaded himself in and
“does most, if not all, of his
damage.” A Border Patrol team
responded to the scene, as did
other law enforcement officials,
who “were breaking windows
and getting kids out,” Considine
said.
B y 12:10 p.m., a Facebook live
stream recorded outside the
front of the school showed police
cars had established a perimeter,
helicopters were flying overhead
and onlookers had gathered. Sev-
en minutes later, school authori-
ties announced on social media
that there was “an active shooter
at Robb Elementary.”
Shots were still being heard at
12:52 p.m., according to radio
recordings. “Do not attempt to
get closer,” a voice warned on the
EMS channel.
After hearing shooting, au-
thorities said, a tactical teamformed a “stack” formation and
eventually breached the class-
room door and killed Ramos in a
shootout. Ramos was in the room
for some minutes before police
officers entered, and it was un-
clear whether he killed the stu-
dents when he first barricaded
himself inside or just before the
police breached the room.
A t 1:06 p.m., Uvalde Police
announced on social media that
the attack was over.
Flanking Gov. Greg Abbott (R)
at a news conference Wednesday,
Te xas law enforcement officials
acknowledged a “failure” in pre-
venting the shooting but repeat-
edly emphasized that quick reac-
tion by authorities probably
saved lives.
In Uvalde, population around
16,000, news of the shooting
spread so quickly that dozens of
people had gathered outside the
cordoned-off school before the
shooting was over. Most were
parents or relatives of students,
desperate for word that they
were safe. Pleas for information
popped up on Facebook, along-
side photos of smiling children
holding certificates from an
award ceremony earlier that day.
“My son’s name is Rogelio
Torres,” one father said, his face
drawn, speaking to a local TV
reporter. “Please, if you know
something, let us know.” Within
hours, Torres’s son became one of
the first children confirmed
dead.
Javier Cazares was on an er-
rand a half-mile away from his
9-year-old daughter’s school
when he heard about a commo-
tion near Robb.
Within minutes, Cazares said,
he and at least other four men
who had children in the school
were huddled near the building’s
front door. Then the fathers
started hearing gunfire coming
from the building.
“There were five or six of [us]fathers, hearing the gunshots,
and [police officers] were telling
us to move back,” Cazares said.
“We didn’t care about us. We
wanted to storm the building. 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 his daughter never
emerged from the building, that
Cazares learned Jacklyn had
been shot and later died at the
hospital.
As the day wore on, the details
became excruciating. Outside a
local civic center that became a
gathering place for families, wit-
nesses described hearing
screams as families received con-
firmation of children’s deaths.
Some relatives were asked for
DNA samples to help investiga-
tors verify identities. Images
from outside the center showed
red-eyed families wailing and
embracing.
“We saw a little girl full of
blood and the parents were
screaming,” said Derek Sotelo,
26, who runs Sotelo’s Auto Serv-
ice and Tire Shop, a family-
owned business that’s been in
downtown Uvalde since 1950. “It
was an ugly scene.”
As the sun started to set Tues-
day evening, John Juhasz stood
inside the gymnasium at the
Getty Street Church of Christ,
welcoming people who came in
to pray.
“We’re just trying to encourage
each other and trying to get
through this,” he said.
About a dozen people sat
around plastic tables, under the
fluorescent lights, to talk about
what still seemed impossible to
many of them. Miguelina Olivar-
ez, 37, a nurse, said she heard
about the shooting from her son
and daughter, a high school sen-
ior and freshman.
“My daughter called me and
said she was hiding, that they
were on lockdown for an active
shooter,” she said. Olivarez said
she then heard that the shooting
was at the elementary school.
“A nd I immediately thought
about all of the little cousins that
we have at that school,” she said.
One of her cousins, a 10-year-old,
was wounded and was rushed to
a San Antonio hospital for sur-
gery.
Erika Escamilla, 26, said that
waiting for news about her niece
and two nephews who attend the
elementary school was like tor-
ture. Within a couple of hours of
the shooting, they were reunited.
Her niece, age 10, told Escamilla
the shooting happened in the
classroom next to hers.
The girl’s class was just com-
ing in from recess when they
heard a guy cursing and yelling,
and then gunshots. Their teacher
pushed them into the classroom
and told them to get down,
Escamilla said. The teacher then
turned off the air conditioner
and the lights, and started to
cover the windows with paper.
When the children eventually
were led to safety, Escamilla’s
niece glimpsed the horrific scene
in the classroom next door.
“She’s traumatized. She said
she felt like she was having a
heart attack,” Escamilla said.
“She saw blood everywhere.”
Marcela Cabralez, a local pas-
tor, received two calls not long
after the shooting began around
midday Tuesday. The first was
from her daughter, who works at
the school, speaking so frantical-
ly that the only decipherable
message was: Check on the kids.
Cabralez was able to confirm
that they were safe, but shaken —
her 9-year-old granddaughter
was eating lunch when the shoot-
ing began and is now fearful of
sudden attacks; her grandson hid
in a bathroom during the ordeal.
“They just don’t feel safe any-
more,” Cabralez said.
The next call Cabralez received
was from a fellow pastor who
runs Hillcrest Memorial funeral
home, a gathering place for trau-
matized children and teachers
who escaped the shooting. The
call was a request for help with
counseling.
When she arrived at the funer-
al home, Cabralez said, she saw
survivors rocking themselves,
holding one another, covering
their ears with their hands, and
screaming. Others stared blankly
in silence. Cabralez said she
started to pray, with some of the
children repeating after her.
“I tried to let them know they
were safe,” she said.Allam and Nakhlawi reported from
Washington and Slater from
Williamstown, Mass. Tim Craig and
Eva Ruth Moravec in Uvalde; Annie
Gowen in Lawrence, Kan.; Jon
Swaine in New York; and Mark
Berman, Silvia Foster-Frau, Devlin
Barrett, Marissa J. Lang and Joyce
Lee in Washington contributed to
this report.JOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POST
ABOVE: Residents of Uvalde, Tex., await updates Tuesday outside the town’s civic center, where witnesses described hearing screams as
families received confirmation of children’s deaths. Dozens of others had gathered outside the cordoned-off school before the shooting was
over. L EFT: A family waits to be escorted by a law enforcement officer to place flowers at a memorial at the school. The daughter of a
sheriff’s deputy was among the dead, as were two members of a girls’ basketball team. One Uvalde man lost three relatives in the shooting.SERGIO FLORES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST“We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm thebuilding. We were saying, ‘Let’s go’ because that ishow worried we were, and we wanted to get ourbabies out.”
Javier Cazares, describing a group of fathers who had gathered near Robb
Elementary’s front door, t hen began to hear gunfire. Cazares would learn later
that his daughter was fatally wounded in the attack.