An 18-year-old gunman on Tuesday fatally shot 19 children and two fourth-grade teachers at a Texas elementary school before he was killed by law enforcement officers, officials said.
The shooter, identified by Texas as Salvador Ramos, also shot his grandmother before crashing a vehicle near the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, as previously reported.
Ramos Shared Images of Assault Rifles on Instagram Days Before Shooting
In the wake of the shooting, the deadliest at an elementary school since the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut in 2012 that left 26 people dead, images from an account reportedly belonging to Ramos (@salv8dor_) emerged on social media. The account has since been pulled from the social media platform.
Days before the shooting, the account shared selfies of a teen who appears to be the shooter, along with photos of two rifles. Another photo showed a person holding a gun magazine in his lap.
'I Got a Lil Secret'
The account also sent out text messages to a Los-Angeles based woman hours before the rampage. The woman, whose identity is not yet known, shared the alarming screenshots in a series of Stories on Instagram following the mass shooting.
According to the exchange, Ramos tagged her in the photo of the assault rifles, which he posted as a Highlight on his profile, and asked her to repost it. "I barely know you and you tag me in a picture with guns," said the woman, who failed to understand why she was being tagged in the image and being asked to share it. Ramos tells her to "be grateful" that she was tagged.
"I'm about to," he wrote, hours before the shooting. "About to what," the woman asked, to which he responded, "I'll tell you before 11."
The shooter then told the woman he'll text her in an hour, before telling her "I got a lil secret" and that he wanted to share it with her. In the last message that he sent the woman at around 9:15 a.m., he wrote "I'mma [sic] air out." The shooting occurred at noon.
Woman Says She Didn't Even Know Ramos
"I don't know him and I don't even live in Texas," the woman wrote in her story she posted after the massacre. "He's a stranger. I know nothing about him. He decided to tag me in his gun post. So sorry for the victims and their families. I really don't know what to say."
"The only reason I responded to him was because I was afraid of him. I wish I stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime. I don't know," she wrote in her story.
