Texas gunman Salvador Ramos warned an online pal in Germany he would "shoot up" an elementary school minutes before massacring 19 children and two teachers.
Ramos, 18, also sent a message saying he was going to shoot his grandmother and another one confirming he had done so, Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference on Wednesday.
The police were called by the grandmother, whom he shot in the face, while Ramos fled the home they shared to carry out the atrocity.
It was a 15-year-old girl from Germany, identified by her nickname Cece, who said that she spoke with Ramos on Yubo, an app where people can livestream themselves to strangers, and he claimed he was going to “shoot up” a school.
Cece said she first met Ramos two weeks earlier on the app, which the gunman used to speak with other teenagers across the world.
On Ramos’ birthday, Cece said that he had a video call with her from a gun shop where he was buying an AR-15, and over the coming days he would tell that he was going to do something with it but wasn’t specific.
Then last Monday he told the 15-year-old that he had received a box full of ammunition and showed a black bag that appeared to contain it.
On the morning of the shooting he told Cece that he was waiting for his “grandpa” to leave his house and that his grandmother was going “to get it”
“Ima do something to her rn,” he wrote.
At 11:21am, Ramos sent another text: “I just shot my grandma in her head,” followed by another: “Ima go shoot up a elementary school rn.”
But the the teen in Germany wasn’t sure whether Ramos was serious and she only got a friend in the US to contact the police when the news of the attack broke on the news.
“Maybe I could’ve changed the outcome,” she said, reported the New York Times.
“I just could never guess that he’d actually do this.”
A the same time Gvr Abbott said that Ramos, a high school dropout, did not appear to have any criminal record or history of mental health problems.
Investigators have not publicly identified a motive.
After fleeing the home of his grandmother, Ramos crashed his car near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
A school police officer approached him outside the building, according to officials, but no gunfire was exchanged. Authorities did not offer further details on that engagement.
Ramos then entered the school through a back door carrying an AR-15 style rifle and made his way to a fourth-grade classroom, where all of the victims were killed, authorities said.
Police surrounded the building, breaking windows to help children and staff escape. Members of the elite Border Patrol Tactical Unit also responded and entered the building to confront the shooter, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss internal information.
Ramos was shot and killed by law enforcement. One agent was hit in the leg and grazed in the head, the official said.
