He had black hair, falling over his ears, a pale face and dark eyes. Salvador Ramos was 18 when he opened fire on a primary school on Tuesday May 24 in Uvalde, United States, 100 km from the Mexican border. At the Robb facility, located at 715 Old Carrizo Road, there were more than 500 children, mostly of Hispanic origin. Among them, 19 died. A member of the educational staff also lost his life.
“The shooter killed his victims in an atrocious and senseless way,” condemned the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. Around 11:30 a.m., the young man broke into several classes, killing at close range children barely ten years old as well as their teachers. Dressed in a paramilitary vest, Salvador Ramos, according to American investigators, first shot his grandmother, before rushing into the primary school. “The suspect crashed near a ditch near the establishment, in a spectacular accident”, revealed Sergeant Estreda, in charge of the investigation.
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Salvador Ramos was unknown to the police. He was educated in the high school of the city. He appears, according to his profiles on social networks, as a dark but uneventful young man. He was often made fun of by his comrades, for his clothes, his financial situation and his family. Taunts that would have, according to one of his former friends sharing the same passion for video games interviewed by the American channel CNN, pushed him to skip class. On his TikTok profile, still visible, he wrote in his biography that “children are scared in real life” (“Kids be scared irl”, in English). An injured and ill-at-ease teenager who gradually developed a passion for firearms.
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Three days earlier, Salvador posted photos of assault rifles on his Instagram account, which has since been closed. It recognizes two AR15, caliber 5.56, commonly used by the US army. The same friend admitted to CNN that the future assassin had sent him photos of weapons a few days earlier as well as a bag full of ammunition. The motives for the attack remain unknown at this time.
The emotion is immense for the Americans, who know their 27th school shooting since the beginning of the year, leaving 27 dead and more than a hundred injured in less than six months, according to data from Education Week. Across the entire US population, the country has experienced 212 mass shootings since January, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts all killings with more than four deaths excluding the assailant. “Enough is enough. Our hearts continue to be broken,” responded Vice President Kamala Harris, calling for “courage to act” in the face of the scourge of gun violence in the United States.
