The mother of the deranged 18-year-old teen who opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing nineteen kids and two teachers said she was “surprised” by his deadly outburst, claiming “my son wasn’t a violent person.”
Adriana Reyes told the Daily Mail on Wednesday that said her son, shooter Salvador Ramos, “kept to himself and didn’t have many friends,” but denied the two had a volatile relationship, the outlet reported.
“My son wasn’t a violent person. I’m surprised by what he did.”
“I pray for those families,” she said. “I’m praying for all of those innocent children, yes I am. They had no part in this.”
The Daily Mail reported that Reyes was a drug addict and had thrown her troubled son out of her home — forcing him to move in with his grandmother, whom he shot before his unimaginable rampage. The grandmother, Celia Gonzalez, remains hospitalized.
Investigators said Ramos crashed his pickup truck in a ditch near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and stormed into the school with a semi-automatic rifle.
He shot and killed nineteen children, two teachers, and injured seventeen others before he was fatally shot by responding officers. Ramos reportedly bought two AR-15 assault rifles on his 18th birthday, one of which he took into the school before he opened fire, investigators said.
His mother said she spoke with him last on Monday — his birthday — and “had a card and a Snoopy stuffed animal to give to him,” she told The Mail.
The deadly incident is the second-worst school shooting in US history, behind only the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which left twenty children and six teachers dead.
“Evil swept across Uvalde yesterday,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday. “Anyone who shoots his grandmother in the face has to have evil in his heart.”
