A preliminary report by the Texas House committee investigating the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre outlined information that was available about the shooter, Salvador Ramos.
According to the report, the shooter had an “unstable home life,” including a mother struggling with substance abuse issues and and no father figure. The shooter’s family “moved often and lived in relative poverty.”
Family members of the shooter knew that he was estranged from his mother and that leading up to his 18th birthday, “he asked for help in making straw gun purchases which would have been illegal.”
Family members “uniformly refused to buy guns for him,” the report stated.
Ramos also “struggled academically throughout his schooling,” the report said, adding that though he had “few disciplinary issues,” the school made “no meaningful intervention” before he was involuntary withdrawn for poor academic performance and excessive absences.
Some of the shooter’s social media contacts received messages from the shooter about guns suggesting he was going to “do something” they would be hearing about in the news
Finally, the report suggests that some social media users may have reported the shooter’s “threatening behavior” to social media platforms that “appear to have not done anything in response.”