The high school class of the Texas mass shooter visited the elementary school just a day before the massacre but the gunman skipped the ceremony, according to one student who attended.
On Monday 23 May, graduating seniors from Uvalde High School visited Robb Elementary School and high fived the students, who attend second, third, and fourth grades. The ceremony was part of the school’s senior week.
One attending student said on social media that the gunman, Salvador Ramos, didn’t take part. The seniors wore their graduation robes and high fived the elementary school students who had lined up uin the hallways as part of a community tradition.
High School classmate Nadia Reyes told The Washington Post that “those kids were so excited to see us in our cap and gown”.
“They’re looking at us like, ‘I’m gonna be there one day.’ It’s surreal, like we’re in a movie. It’s horrible,” she added.
On Monday morning, Uvalde High School principal Randy Harris tweeted a video from the ceremony, showing the seniors greeting the younger students.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the senior took part in a similar ceremony at another elementary school.
During the shooting the following day, 19 children and two adults were killed.
Ms Reyes also told the paper that Ramos posted an Instagram story two months ago that showed him screaming at his mother, who he said was trying to make him leave the home.
“He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there and he’d call his mom a b**** and say she wanted to kick him out,” Ms Reyes said. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”
Ms Reyes said she remembers around five fistfights involving Ramos in middle school and junior high. Any friendships he managed to form didn’t last long, she added. She said he once told a friend who wanted to join the Marines that he only had that goal because then he would be able to kill people. The boy ended the friendship then and there.
“He would take things too far, say something that shouldn’t be said, and then he would go into defence mode about it,” Ms Reyes told The Post.
