Uvalde Part 3
Now that the Texas legislature has released a report of their investigation into the events of May 24th at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a somewhat clearer picture is starting to emerge. For one thing, we now know that the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos (the legislature report refuses to name him – they refer to him as “the attacker”), had some kind of fixation on the idea of killing a bunch of children. Just what prompted his plan is unknown and may never be known, but there are indications that he held some kind of grudge against children at Robb, where he himself had been a student, possibly particularly fourth graders. He reportedly mentioned something to someone a few weeks before he went on his rampage about something that happened in fourth grade. His female cousin, who was his fourth-grade classmate, told investigators that he was bullied by other children. One girl tied his shoelaces together and he stood up and fell, suffering injuries in the fall. She said they were both bullied, including by teachers. (Ramos’ teacher was at the school at the time of the shooting but was in another room.) His family said he was teased because of a stutter. His former girlfriend said she believed he had been sexually abused as a child by one of his mother’s boyfriends and his mother ignored his cries.
Whatever Ramos’ motivation was, he seems to have decided some time ago that he was going to be a school shooter, apparently whenever he could lay his hands on suitable weapons. He let his hair grow long and changed his style of dress; he began dressing in black and wearing combat boots. It was about this time that his girlfriend dumped him. (There are theories put forth that mass shooters are sex-starved loners but Ramos had girlfriends.) As for him personally, he was born in North Dakota but his parents returned to Uvalde where his mother and possibly both of his parents were from. He had an older sister. His mother was known around Uvalde, as was his grandmother. His mother worked as a waitress and had a reputation as a drug user. Their relationship was strained as was his relationship with his father. His grandmother worked for the Uvalde school district for twenty-seven years. (There were reports that she was a teacher’s aide at Robb at the time of the shooting but this seems to have been in error. The report says she was retired.)
Although he seems to have been a good student as a young child, he got off track somewhere, possibly around fourth grade, and became truant. He sometimes missed as many as 100 days in a school year. His grades were failing. The last grade he completed was ninth. He was expelled from school due to his constant truancy and failing grades. He got a job at a local Whataburger (a well-known Texas fast-food line) but was fired after a month when a female coworker complained about comments he made to her. He then got on with Wendy’s. He also worked for his grandfather in his air-conditioning business. His grandfather paid in cash. His family said he hoarded his money. They thought he planned to buy a car or get an apartment. He didn’t have a drivers license. His family said he didn’t know how to drive.
Like many other teenagers, Ramos spent time on Internet chat groups. He expressed a fondness for guns but his family says he’d never even shot one, much less owned one, other than a BB gun. He posted a video in which he was riding around town “dryfiring” at pedestrians with a BB gun. (There were earlier media reports that he was shooting people with BBs.) He posted another video of him with a dead cat in a clear plastic bag. He made hostile comments to girls in chat rooms. He had a reputation around Uvalde among other teenagers, some of whom had started referring to him as “school shooter.” A local student he knew advised him that he was being called by that name. He made several efforts to obtain a firearm. He tried to get his older sister to buy one for him but she refused. He had the money. He ended up spending some $5,000-6,000 on two AR-15 knockoff rifles along with accessories and ammunition. He told someone that he was waiting for a shipment; when it came in “something is going to happen”, something that he said would make him famous.
He bought two rifles soon after his eighteenth birthday, one from Daniel Defense, a firearms manufacturer in Savannah, Georgia that is famous for its high-quality rifles modeled on the 1950s-era AR-15. Daniel sells both to individuals and the government. He ordered the one rifle, which cost right at $2,000, from Daniel’s website but had it delivered to Oasis Outback, a local outfitter that features a barbecue restaurant as well as a sporting goods store. Federal law requires that mail-order (and Internet) gun sellers deliver their weapons to another licensed firearms dealer for the customer to pick up. He bought a second rifle from Oasis’ stock. The salesman told interviewers that he asked where he got the money for such expensive purchases and Ramos said, “I saved it.” The Oasis clerk said his conduct wasn’t unusual. However, customers who claimed to be there when he was in the store said he was “weird.” He purchased clips and other accessories from various sources and bought ammunition as well, some by mail order. His last order, a shipment of over a thousand rounds of .223 hollow-point cartridges arrived the night before he went on his spree.
Some believed that he planned to go to the elementary school the day graduating seniors went there to walk through the hallways. If so, he missed it, perhaps because his ammunition hadn’t arrived yet. The next day was the last day of school for elementary students. He was upset with his grandmother because she had told him she was going to remove him from her cellphone family plan. She had also banned his rifles from her house. His uncle agreed to keep at least one of them but he evidently spirited it away and had both rifles at his grandmother’s house. Whether shooting his grandmother was part of his plan is not certain, but he told a young German girl that he was “friends” with on the Internet that he was going to shoot her. After he shot her in the face, he got back on his phone and told the girl he had shot her. She replied “cool” but later deleted the post. However, it was on Ramos’ phone.
After shooting his grandmother, he jumped in her truck (even though he had no license) and drove toward the school a few blocks away. His grandmother’s neighbor called police. A video released by Texas media – without permission from investigators – shows the truck crashing into a concrete drainage ditch next to the school yard. The video, which came from the funeral home across the street, shows two men walk toward the truck, then turn around and start running away after he shot at them. His family believes these are the first shots he ever fired. They don’t think he had ever fired a firearm of any kind before. His uncle said he didn’t even know how to insert the clip into the rifle, he fumbled with it and dropped it on the floor. The video then shows him walking toward the school. He jumps over a five-foot fence (such fences are NOT common around Texas schools. There’s a school only a few thousand feet from my house and there is no fence around it) after throwing a bag of ammunition over it.
There were children outside playing and a coach dressed in black was outside with one group. Police had rushed toward the school after being alerted by the grandmother’s neighbor. One officer saw the coach and thought he was the shooter. Fortunately, he didn’t fire. Teachers alerted the school that there was someone on campus shooting and an announcement was made for students and teachers to get in their rooms and lock down. School personnel thought it was a “bail-out,” which is common in Uvalde. The town is only fifty miles from the border. Vehicles carrying illegal immigrants are chased into town by law enforcement. They hit something or are stopped and the illegals “bail-out” and take off running. Some are armed.
Ramos walked to the western entrance to the west building – Robb Elementary has several buildings connected by walkways. Video from a school security camera shows him coming through the door. For some reason, he left his bag and one of his rifles outside. The report claims that all three doors to the building were unlocked, a violation of school policy that called for them to be locked at all times. The doors are equipped with automatic locking doors but they can be rendered ineffective with a key. Someone had unlocked the doors, perhaps to make it easier for children and teachers to go in and out during recess or maybe because it was the last day of school and there were a lot of visitors on campus. Ramos had recently talked to his cousin’s son, who was an elementary student, about their activities. The video shows him coming through the door then it switches to show him walking some 70-80 feet down the hallway to rooms 111 and 112 where he starts shooting and walks through the door of one of the classrooms. He only hesitates for a second before he disappears. One of the rooms is his former classroom. The report states that several school employees said that the lock to room 111 was faulty, that it had to be forcibly locked rather than locking automatically as soon as the door came shut. They DO NOT say that the door could not be locked. The school, as are most Texas schools, is equipped with self-locking doors that can only be opened by someone with a key or card reader. The report is unclear whether or not the Robb locks used card readers, they apparently had keys. Several school staff and students knew the door didn’t always lock; they often went there when it was unoccupied to use a printer. This led the investigators to conclude that the door to room 111 “may” not have been locked.
Just which classroom Ramos entered is unclear. There is a vestibule with the doorways to rooms 111 and 112. The teacher in room 111 was wounded but survived. He told interviewers that Ramos entered room 112 first then came into his adjoining room and started shooting. He also stated that the door was locked. The legislature investigators decided he must have entered room 111 under the assumption that it was unlocked. Ramos proceeded to fire off clip after clip. Law enforcement estimated he fired “at least” 100 of the 142 spent cartridges later found in the two rooms and killed and wounded most, if not all, of the victims. The video captures the sound of the firing but the sounds of screaming are edited out. By the time law enforcement got into the building some three minutes after Ramos entered, he had already done most of his shooting.
The video is shot from the north end of the corridor some 80 feet from the doors to the two rooms and does not show the whole picture. Two groups of officers, all from the Uvalde police and school police, entered the building at about the same time, one group from the north and one from the south, including the chief of the school police and a police lieutenant who was acting chief since the chief was on vacation. (He was in contact with him by phone.) The head of the police SWAT team also entered the building shortly after the shooting. The officers who came in from the north advance down the hall to the two rooms where Ramos is believed to be. One, who is in civilian clothes wearing a police vest, appears to be trying the door when a volley of shots are fired. Bullets tear through the wall around the door and perhaps the door itself. Several officers are hit by fragments, though none are seriously injured. The officers retreat to the end of the corridor. However, the other group does not retreat. The video doesn’t show them clearly because they are too far away. Occasionally, legs and lower bodies appear almost as shadows.
The media and politicians accuse the officers, all of whom are local Uvalde residents, of inaction. Some had relatives and friends inside those rooms. One officer’s wife is one of the teachers who was killed. To accuse them of inaction is inaccurate and callous. Although no one seems to have assumed responsibility as the on-scene commander, they were taking action, including calling for a tactical team with the necessary equipment to breach the door without exposing the officers to fire. The officers, most of whom were armed with pistols, were in a very difficult situation. They were facing a shooter armed with a semiautomatic high-powered rifle (any centerfire rifle is high-powered) inside a room possibly filled with children they could not see. Several officers came in with rifles but they were helpless as they had no target to shoot at. (Other officers came in, some armed with rifles. A total of nineteen officers were reportedly in the hall by the two classrooms.) Ramos, on the other hand, could fire through the walls and possibly hit someone. The suggestion that they could have broken a window and shot him from outside is not exactly sound. Ramos was inside and less hampered by visibility than those outside who were attempting to see in a darkened room. He also had the advantage of being able to fire at anyone trying to see in a window.
Critics cry that the officers had armor and shields. This is only partially true. While they were wearing vests, they only protect the upper body and they cannot stop rifle bullets. They do not protect the head and extremities. It wasn’t until almost half an hour after Ramos entered the school that the first shields arrived and they were not designed to protect against rifle fire. They have also been criticized for not trying to batter the door down. First, anyone trying to batter the door would have been exposed to rifle fire. Second, the doors were solid steel designed to open outward. The frames were also steel. Battering rams, which they did not have, are effective against doors that open inward, as most doors do, but not against outward opening doors. Sledgehammers have also been suggested but whoever might attempt to use one would have been putting themselves in mortal danger. Yes, police procedures for school shootings call for neutralizing the shooter as soon as possible without regard for personal safety but procedures are written by staff on desks who most likely have never been in a shooting situation in their life. Plans and procedures go out the window when reality sets in as it did at Uvalde.
Until I saw the video, I was under the impression that the walls were made of concrete blocks. However, they appear to be sheetrock. The school was originally built in the 1950s and the west building was added in the eighties. While concrete would at least partially block a bullet, sheetrock will not. A teacher in room 109, two rooms away from room 111, was hit by a bullet that came through the wall. The officers spoke in whispers and kept their movements to a minimum to prevent Ramos from knowing where they were and firing through the walls.
Over the hour and seventeen minutes from the time Ramos entered the building until he was killed, hundreds of law enforcement personnel showed up at the school, almost 400 in all. Most were Border Patrol and Texas Department of Public Safety personnel – state troopers – who came in from surrounding counties. (Texas Rangers are DPS but the report doesn’t show any Rangers separately.) Officers from sheriffs and police departments in other counties and cities arrived, as did Federal officers who came from San Antonio some eighty miles away. There was a large contingent of Border Patrol agents, which isn’t surprising since Uvalde is only some 50-70 miles from the Mexican border, depending on which direction. It’s closest at Del Rio. There is a Border Patrol office in Uvalde and a number of Border Patrol officers live in and around the town. One off-duty Border Patrol agent borrowed a shotgun from the barber who was cutting his hair when word of the shootings was announced. He proceeded to the school and went inside and got his child, although which part of the school he actually went in hasn’t been revealed; Robb Elementary, which includes second through fourth grades, has some fourteen buildings on the campus.
Although the media has accused law enforcement of doing nothing, they were actually very involved. Some 500 students were brought out of the school. They didn’t want to risk bringing the children in the west building out into the halls where Ramos might fire at them through the walls so they brought them out through the windows. News accounts don’t reveal where the children were taken although they seem to have been taken to a central location, possibly the cafeteria or gymnasium, so school officials and law enforcement could get an accurate count before they were released to their parents. Parents and others who gathered at the school were kept at a distance both for their protection and to avoid chaos and confusion. Media has described the scene at the school as “chaotic” and while that might have been true outside since hundreds of LEs had shown up and had nothing to do, the scene in the hall by the classroom is anything but chaotic. Officers are waiting patiently for tactical personnel to arrive. Sharpshooters are on station with their rifles aimed at the doors in case Ramos attempted to come out. Some officers expressed concern about the possibility of being caught in a crossfire if officers started shooting from different directions.
Finally, over an hour after Ramos entered the school, the Border Patrol TAC team, or BORTAC, arrives. They are carrying the first rifle-proof shield to arrive at the school. US Marshalls had brought it in about a half hour before. They also have a device for opening doors. However, the BORTAC commander is advised to try it on another door first. He concludes that using the device would be too dangerous as the officers would be exposed to Ramos’ fire for too long. He elects to use a key to open the door. The legislatures concluded, based on conclusions from law enforcement personnel who weren’t there, that the door to room 111 was unlocked. However, the teacher in the room said it was. Chief Arredondo of the school police said it was. He could see the lock protruding into the door sill. The BORTAC commander, who actually opened the door, said it was. The claim that the door was not locked is based purely on conjecture. The irony is that the investigators never even addressed the possibility that even if the door wasn’t locked when Ramos found it, he might very well have pulled it shut behind him when he went in the room. The door was definitely closed. The “effort” to lock the door was probably simply tugging on it to make sure the lock engaged.
There were several rings of keys floating around. Chief Arredondo had a ring and some of the other officers had keys but none of them worked in other classroom doors. The principal and other school staff supposedly had master keys but weren’t consulted. Regardless, someone finally found a key that worked. The BORTAC commander opened the door and, using the rifle shield, the team rushed through the door and shot Ramos dead.
Then the finger-pointing began.