WWALDE, Texas – Not without warning, when an 18-year-old who often mates with classmates before leaving high school posted a photo of two long black rifles in his history on Instagram.
The image was shocking enough that high school freshman Uwalde sent it to his older cousin on Saturday morning and asked who would allow the former student to get the guns.
“He wants to shoot something,” said Jeremiah Munoz’s older cousin, who had graduated from high school and knew the former student.
The freshman noted that the upcoming week is the last of the school year and said in words that would become chillingly insightful: “Now I’m afraid to go to school.” He added an emoji with a skull.
The exchange adds to the abundance of evidence that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos began teasing his plans – sometimes obliquely and sometimes more clearly – in the days and weeks before he fatally shot 19 children and two teachers in a classroom on Tuesday.
The freshman was far from the only person who feared that he might point the gun at students in the field.
A 15-year-old girl in Germany talks on video with Mr Ramos as he visits a gun shop, unpacks a box of ammunition he ordered online, and demonstrates a black luggage bag containing magazines and a rifle. One of his colleagues at Wendy’s in Uwalde said that the 18-year-old boy often threw himself at other employees and clients and that they started calling him names, including “school shooter”, partly because of his long hair and dark clothes. . A California woman he met online said she was frightened when he suddenly tagged her in a photo of his weapon, telling him “it’s just scary.”
The exchanges raise questions about whether teenagers who know the 18-year-old should have reported concerns to their parents or authorities, and could also provide warning signs to millions of parents and students who are now asking how it could be. the next mass shooting stopped.
Experts on mass shootings call revelations like those that play out online “leaks” and say they are much more common among young armed men.
From the opinion: Texas School Shooting
A comment from the Times Opinion on the massacre at an elementary school in Uwalde, Texas.
- Michelle Goldberg: As we come to terms with another tragedy, the most common feeling is the bitter admission that nothing will change.
- Nicholas Christoph, a former Times Opinion columnist: Weapons policy is complex and politically boring and will not make everyone safe. But it can reduce gun deaths.
- Roxanne Gay: For all our cultural mania for courtesy, there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s acceptance of the persistence of mass shootings.
- Jay Caspian Kang: Sharing memes with each new tragedy, we have created a museum of unbearable grief, full of names and photos of the dead.
“You see significantly more outflows among adolescents who carry out attacks than among adults,” he said. Reed Meloy, a forensic psychologist in San Diego. He said up to 90 per cent of young attackers could tell someone in advance of their intention to cause harm.
Law enforcement is increasingly trying to identify future attackers, focusing more on their behavior and less on potential motives or ideologies.
At a news conference on Friday, police uncovered even more potential warning signs: the 18-year-old unsuccessfully asked his sister to buy him a gun in September and then, in March, told friends in a group message that he was buying one.
Updated
May 27, 2022, 8:26 pm ET
Later in March, someone was worried enough to send him a message on Instagram asking, “Are you going to shoot at school or something?” To which he replied, “No,” and “stop asking stupid questions,” according to Stephen. McCrow, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Mr Ramos eventually bought two debit card rifles earlier this month after turning 18, police said.
People in the shooter’s orbit have given various explanations as to why they did not report the alarming behavior.
The 15-year-old girl in Germany, who met the future shooter on a social media app called Yubo and then texted him and called two weeks before the shooting, said he had not been explicit about his plans until the day of the attack. when he sent her a message that he had shot his grandmother and was about to “shoot a primary school”.
For days, he said he had a “secret” that he would eventually reveal, according to screenshots shared by the girl, who wanted to be identified only by her nickname Cece. She said that even when he said he was going to attack the primary school, she was not sure if he was serious and did not ask a friend to contact the police until he saw that the shooting had taken place, which she regretted.
Sessie said on Friday that she had not been interviewed by any authorities since the shooting.
Several other people who met him online said he had sent them disturbing messages.
Kendra Charmaine, a 17-year-old in California, said she first met him on Omegle, a website where people call strangers, and that they started following each other on Instagram. Soon he was sending her messages that made her stop answering. “He responded to my stories with things like ‘I want to kill you’ or ‘I hate you,'” she said.
A study published in 2018 by the FBI found that classmates and teachers were more likely to see warning signs in active shooters under the age of 18 (the Uwalde shooter turned 18 eight days before the attack). The survey also found that when people observe the behavior of a future shooter, 41 percent report it to police, while 54 percent do nothing.
The study, which evaluated active shooters between 2000 and 2013, found that people who knew the attackers observed mental health behavior in 62% of cases. In 57% of cases, someone noticed that the future attacker had an anxious interaction with another person, and in 56% of cases, the person revealed an intention to hurt people in some way.
Other researchers who studied the mass shootings found that many of the armed men were targeted by their husbands, and some had a history of violence against women.
However, experts warn that many people who match the profile of a mass shooter never carry out an attack, which can make it difficult for acquaintances to determine whether a person is a real threat or not.
17-year-old Kiana Baxter, a junior at Uwalde High School, which Mr Ramos attended, said he was largely self-centered, but was sometimes aggressive or intimidating.
At the end of last year, she said, Mr Ramos invited her out. When she rejected it, she said Mr Ramos had started setting up various Instagram accounts to send her harassing messages such as “I hate you” or “I will hurt you”. However, Ms Baxter said she was not afraid of Mr Ramos, saying she never expected him to pursue violence, let alone mass murder.
“Yes, he was aggressive,” Ms. Baxter said. “But no one ever thought he was sinister enough to do something like that.”
Mike Baker, Sheila Dewan and Jasmine Uloa contributed to the reports.
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