Texas school gunman Salvador Ramos was arrested four years ago after saying he planned to ‘shoot up a school’ when he turned 18 in 2022, according to a US lawmaker.
Republican Rep Tony Gonzalez of Texas offered new details about the Robb Elementary School massacre on Fox News on Friday morning.
‘This wasn’t hearsay. I got this late last night: The shooter was arrested years ago, four years ago, for having this plan for basically saying, for saying, you know, when I’m a senior in 2022, I am going to shoot up a school,’ Gonzalez said.
‘Something fell between the cracks between then and now to allow this to happen. We need to shake out all the facts.’
Gonzalez said that authorities must figure out what happened to ensure a similar scenario does not occur again.
‘But if law enforcement, you know, identified him four years ago as a threat, we need to figure out why he wasn’t – you know, how he got removed from that,’ Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said he was under the impression that Ramos and another individual were plotting out the massacre.
‘The police looked into it and arrested him,’ Gonzalez said. ‘He went to juvenile, from what I can gather, he went to a correctional facility.’
Texas Greg Abbott has not yet addressed claims that Ramos was arrested as a juvenile. Abbott is scheduled to hold a news conference on the shooting at 11am local time.
Ramos opened fire at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, fatally shooting 19 children and two adults.
On Thursday, Texas state police launched a re-examination of the law enforcement response to the massacre, as officials acknowledged that Ramos was not confronted as he entered the campus. Cops who first responded to the incident retreated when Ramos shot at them and waited an hour for tactical SWAT teams to take him down.
‘He walked in unobstructed initially. He was not confronted by anybody,’ Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said on Thursday. ‘Four minutes later, law enforcement are coming in to solve this problem.’
.
