Relatives of one of the children killed in the Uvalde school shooting confronted the killer’s mother on Tuesday — a tense and heartbreaking scene that ultimately ended with the mother apologizing through tears for her son’s actions.
The confrontation took place after a meeting of some of the relatives of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed at Robb Elementary School on May 24, according to Telemundo, whose cameras caught the encounter.
The video shows Adriana Martinez, the mother of the 18-year-old shooter, Salvador Ramos, walking across a street in Uvalde. An SUV carrying several people, who Telemundo identified as members of Uvalde victim Amerie Jo Garza’s family, stops in the street, and family members get out to confront Martinez. It’s not clear whether Martinez was attending the same meeting as the victims’ families.
In her first interview shortly after the shooting, Martinez pleaded for forgiveness for her and her son. Asked why her son would commit the massacre, Martinez replied that he “had his reasons.” On Tuesday, Amerie Jo’s family demanded to know what those reasons were.
“What reasons? Because he was pissed off at you? Because you destroyed him?” the relatives asked, according to video shared by Telemundo. “What reason did he have to kill 21 [people]?
Martinez responded that her son had mental-health issues. “You have no right to judge my son,” she told the family. “... may God forgive y’all.”
But then she was consolatory: “I know my son was a coward. You don’t think I don’t know that? I know. You don’t think I’m carrying all that with me? ... I know, and I’m sorry.”
Martinez’s apology did little to assuage the girl’s family: “She’s not innocent,” Dana Mendiola, Amerie Jo’s grandmother, told Telemundo. Law enforcement eventually arrived and Martinez got in a police car.
Signs of the shooter’s disturbing behavior — which included killing cats and terrorizing women with threats of graphic violence — were ignored in the years leading up to the massacre at Robb Elementary, according to an interim report released over the weekend by a committee investigating the shooting. According to the report, a former girlfriend said she believed the killer was abused by one of his mother’s boyfriends, but his mother didn’t believe him when he mentioned the abuse.
None of his online behavior or threats were reported to law enforcement.
____
