The mother of Texas elementary school gunman Salvador Ramos was seen leaving her Texas home on Thursday – two days after her son massacred 19 children and two teachers at an Uvalde elementary school.
Adriana Reyes, who said she was ‘surprised’ at her son’s horrific killing spree at Robb Elementary School, was seen leaving home clutching her glasses and keys one day after she attended church where she broke down in tears.
Fatima Abraham, a community leader at Heart Catholic Church, said she had noticed a woman sobbing in the pews on Wednesday.
Reyes revealed who she was and Abraham held her in her arms as she cried and tried to console her.
‘I simply told her that we were with her, that not everyone here was against her,’ she told the Texas Tribune. ‘She has to know that she is not to blame for this. She didn’t put that gun in her son’s hand.’
Abraham added that the church was ‘with her’ ‘because we have to pray instead of criticizing or attacking.’
‘Turning into hate and resentment is not good for humanity,’ she told reporters in Spanish.
Just a few hours after Reyes was consoled by Abraham, the church hosted dozens of mourning Uvalde residents who came to pray after the massacre.
Reyes admitted her son was a loner who ‘kept to himself and didn’t have many friends’ but shot down reports she had a toxic relationship with him.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com she did not address claims she was a drug addict who saw the boy ditch her and go to live with his grandmother Celia Gonzalez.
Reyes was speaking from the bedside of Gonzalez, 66, as she recovers from being blasted in the face by her vile grandson before he went on a rampage and shot dead 19 children and two teachers.
He had bought two AR-15 assault rifles, bragged about them on social media and suggested he would commit an atrocity before the deadly attack.
But earlier today Ramos’ grandfather revealed the family had no idea he legally purchased the two weapons last week.
Rolando Reyes, 74, Gonzalez’s husband, also claimed his grandson had been a quiet teenager who spent most of his time alone in his room.
Speaking to DailyMail.com from San Antonio, Reyes said: ‘My son wasn’t a violent person. I’m surprised by what he did.
‘I pray for those families. I’m praying for all of those innocent children, yes I am. They [the children] had no part in this.’
She was speaking from the hospital where her mother Gonzalez was still being treated for the gunshot wounds to her face.
She also slapped down reports she had a toxic relationship with her son that may have warped his personality. She continued: ‘I had a good relationship with him. He kept to himself; he didn’t have many friends.’
She said the last time she spoke with him was last Monday, on his birthday, adding: ‘I had a card and a Snoopy stuffed animal to give to him.’
She claims she did not know where Salvador shot her mother but added, me and my sister are going to care for her when she gets home to Uvalde.
She said her mother ‘with her left hand, was able to hold my hand.’ She added her mother cannot smile but knows she is there for her. She said doctors do not know what her mother’s prognosis is.
Earlier today the boy’s grandfather Rolando Reyes told how the family were kept in the dark about the two lethal weapons he bought.
He told ABC News: ‘I didn’t know he had weapons. If I’d have known, I would have reported it.’
Ramos is believed to have gone to live with his grandparents after rowing with his mother about cutting to WiFi at their home.
The shooter’s grandfather also revealed he was quiet and would sometimes go to work with him.
He said: ‘Sometimes I’d take him to work with me. Not all the time, but sometimes. This past year he didn’t go to school. He didn’t graduate. You would try to tell him but kids nowadays they think they know everything.
‘He was very quiet, he didn’t talk very much.’ The teen did not live with his mother because they had ‘problems’, the grandfather added.
It comes after it emerged Ramos had warned in online messages minutes before the attack he had shot his grandmother and was going to shoot up a school.
He used an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in the bloodbath Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He had legally bought two such rifles just days before, soon after his birthday, authorities said.
Investigators shed no immediate light on the motive. Gov. Greg Abbott said Ramos, a resident of the community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio, had no known criminal or mental health history.
But about 30 minutes before the bloodbath, Ramos made three social media posts, Abbott said. According to the governor, Ramos posted he was going to shoot his grandmother, then he had shot the woman, and finally he was going to shoot up an elementary school.
Seventeen people were also injured in the attack. ‘Evil swept across Uvalde yesterday. Anyone who shoots his grandmother in the face has to have evil in his heart,’ Abbott said at a news conference.
‘But it is far more evil for someone to gun down little kids. It is intolerable and it is unacceptable for us to have in the state anybody who would kill little kids in our schools.’
Democrat Beto O´Rourke, who is running against Abbott for governor this year, interrupted the news conference, calling the Republican´s response to the tragedy ‘predictable.’ O´Rourke was escorted out while members of the crowd yelled at him, with one man calling him a ‘sick son of a bitch.’
As details of the latest mass killing to rock the US emerged, grief engulfed the small town of Uvalde, population 16,000.
The dead included an outgoing 10-year-old, Eliahna Garcia, who loved to sing, dance and play basketball; a fellow fourth grader, Xavier Javier Lopez, who had been eagerly awaiting a summer of swimming; and a teacher, Eva Mireles, with 17 years´ experience whose husband is an officer with the school district´s police department.
‘I just don´t know how people can sell that type of a gun to a kid 18 years old,’ Eliahna´s aunt, Siria Arizmendi, said angrily through tears. ‘What is he going to use it for but for that purpose?’
Lt Christopher Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN that all of those killed were in the same fourth-grade classroom.
The killer ‘barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting children and teachers that were inside that classroom,’ Olivarez said. ‘It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter.’
Law enforcement officers eventually broke into the classroom and killed the gunman. Police and others responding to the attack also went around breaking windows at the school to enable students and teachers to escape.
The attack in the predominantly Latino town of Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in the US since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
The bloodshed was the latest in a seemingly unending string of mass killings at churches, schools, stores and other sites in the United States. Just 10 days earlier, 10 Black people were shot to death in a racist rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.
In a somber address to the nation hours after the attack in Texas, President Joe Biden pleaded for Americans to ‘stand up to the gun lobby’ and enact tougher restrictions, saying: ‘When in God´s name are we going to do what has to be done?’
But the prospects for any reform of the nation´s gun regulations appeared dim. Repeated attempts over the years to expand background checks and enact other curbs have run into Republican opposition in Congress.
On social media in the days and hours before the massacre, Ramos appeared to drop hints that something was going to happen.
On the day Ramos bought his second weapon last week, an Instagram account that investigators say apparently belong to Ramos carried a photo of two AR-style rifles. Ramos apparently tagged another Instagram user, one with more than 10,000 followers, asking her to share the picture with her followers.
‘I barely know you and u tag me in a picture with some guns,’ replied the Instagram user, who has since removed her profile. ‘It´s just scary.’
On the morning of the attack, the account linked to the gunman replied: ‘I´m about to.’
Instagram confirmed it was working with law enforcement to review the account but declined to answer questions about the postings.
Investigators are also looking at an account on TikTok, possibly belonging to the shooter, with a profile that reads: ‘Kids be scared IRL,’ an acronym meaning ‘in real life.’ The profile is not dated.
Investigators do not yet know why Ramos targeted the school, said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
‘We don´t see a motive or catalyst right now,’ he said.
Officers found one of the rifles in Ramos´ truck, the other in the school, according to the briefing given to lawmakers. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, but it had no hardened body-armor plates inside, lawmakers were told. He also dropped a backpack containing several magazines full of ammunition near the school entrance.
One of the guns was purchased at a federally licensed dealer in the Uvalde area on May 17, according to state Sen. John Whitmire, who was briefed by investigators. Ramos bought 375 rounds of ammunition the next day, then purchased the second rifle last Friday.
On Tuesday morning, Ramos shot and wounded his grandmother at her home, then left. Neighbors called police when she staggered outside and they saw she had been shot in the face, Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine said.
Ramos then crashed his truck through a railing
Share on Facebook «||» Share on Twitter «||» Share on Reddit «||» Share on LinkedIn