UVALDE, Texas — The Texas Department of Public Safety says clarified information about the Robb Elementary School shooter's social media activity on the day he took 21 lives.
Initially, DPS reported the suspect identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, posted publicly on Facebook after he shot his grandmother in the face. DPS now says the shooter had sent a Facebook Messenger chat to someone else about what he was doing.
DPS Colonel Steven McCraw says they are looking into if the shooter had any accomplices, although it's believed he acted alone. Ramos had told family members back in September 2021 he needed help buying a gun.
According to DPS, his sister "flatly refused" to help him. Ramos had discussed being a school shooter in a group chat February 28, 2022.
In another message on March 3, 2022, someone asked Ramos if he was buying a gun and replied "he just bought something." According to previous reports, the gunman had legally bought two rifles last week.
On March 14, Ramos had an Instagram post saying "10 more days." Also in March, an Instagram user asked if he was going to shoot up a school and Ramos replied "no, stop asking stupid questions and you'll see."
DPS says the shooter used a debit card to buy the rifles and 1,600 rounds of ammunition, but they're investigating why and how he was able to purchase them.
Col. McCraw got emotional and said if it would help, he would apologize to the victims' families.
"Forget how I'm doing, what about the parents of those children?" Col. McCraw said.
According to McCraw, the on-scene commander believed it was a barricaded subject and not an active shooter, although there were multiple 911 calls from inside the classroom asking for police to come help.
"Ideally, we could've been able to identify this guy as a suspect and address it before he even thought about attacking on the 24th," McCraw said.
When asked why the shooter was not on any kind of radar, McCraw said he wished he was.
"We need the public, just like we did back in 2018, that was a public that came forward [saying] we had two people that planned to shoot up a school...we need everyone, when we have a threat to life like that, to take it seriously and report it," he said.