Texas massacre: “My son is not a monster,” said the mother of the shooter

The mother of an 18-year-old killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, in the U.S. state of Texas, before being shot by police, her son said. “is not a monster”but he can “be aggressive”.

“Sometimes I feel discomfort, like‘ What are you doing? ’” Adriana Reyes said in an interview with ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman. “can be aggressive… If he was really angry, “the woman added.

Reyes’ son, Salvador Ramos, bought two assault rifles in the days after his birthday and used them on Tuesday to conduct the second-deadly school shooting in U.S. history, all in eight days. .

Twenty-one people were killed in the attack on Robb Elementary School. Nineteen of them were in third and fourth grade, while the other two victims were school teachers.

Another 17 people were injured, including three officers from the security forces. Salvador’s grandmother, who police say was his first victim, was hospitalized in good condition.

“We all have moments of anger, some people are more than others”, Said the mother of the shooter in the interview.

Reyes expressed his solidarity with the children killed and their parents on several occasions in the interview, and stressed that he did not know his son had purchased the weapons.

“The kids… I can’t say anything,” Reyes said, his voice shaking.

Several classmates from Santiago told ABC News that Ramos he was known to fight with other students and intimidate them. They also mentioned that over the past two years he had exhibited increasingly disruptive behavior, threatening at least one classmate and harassing others, and he said he had caused injuries to his face by cutting himself.

Ramos was accused of shooting his grandmother at their home in Uvalde before driving his grandfather’s car to Robb Elementary School. He crashed into a wall near the school, got out of the car carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and shot two people outside a nearby funeral home, leaving no one injured.

He then exchanged gunfire with a school district security officer, ran inside and shot two arriving Uvalde police officers outside the building. All policemen were injured.

Then, Ramos went to two adjacent classrooms. “That’s where the massacre started,” said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Police arrived at the scene of the massacre in response to a report of a car accident. They heard gunshots coming from the school, they ran in and fired. Several police began smashing windows and evacuating children and teachers.

Finally, about 30 minutes after Ramos entered the school, he was shot and killed by one of the Border Patrol agents.