“It’s time to die”. This is how 18-year-old Salvador Ramos told his would-be victims of the fate that awaited them as he aimed his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at a class of students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. , Tuesday, May 24. The results are terrible: 19 children between 9 and 10 years old, as well as two teachers, were coldly murdered. The assailant had however warned on social networks of his intention to attack a primary school. The account, minute by minute, of this new mass killing which has bereaved the United States.
- 11:00 a.m.: the assailant targets his grandmother and takes the direction of the primary school
Around 11 a.m. Tuesday, the killer, later identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, announced “on Facebook” that he was going to “shoot” his grandmother, where he lives, according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott . Touched in the face, the 66-year-old woman can nevertheless alert the police. She will be transported in critical condition to University Health Hospital in San Antonio. The young man, in paramilitary uniform, fled with his grandmother’s pick-up. On Facebook, he also announces that he will attack “a primary school”, still according to the governor.
According to CNN, he announced just before his act that he had “shot (his) grandmother in the head” and was going to “shoot in an elementary school now” in a message to a young German girl he met online at the start. may. She did not specify which social network he used. The 15-year-old, who lives in Frankfurt, said he was angry with his grandmother that morning because she was “on the phone with (telephone company) AT&T” about his phone.
- 11:28 a.m.: a road accident
After 3.5 km of road, he is the victim of an accident for an undetermined reason near the Robb primary school, where more than 500 children between 7 and 11 years old are educated. They only had a few more school days before the end of the school year.
- 11:30 a.m.: arrival at school and the start of the gunfire
The assailant exits the vehicle with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a backpack full of ammunition. He sees two people in the distance near a funeral home and shoots them, said Victor Escalon, an official with the Texas Department of Public Safety, on Thursday May 26.
- 11:40 a.m.: start of shooting
These shootings triggered a 911 call reporting the presence of a shooter at the school at 11:30 a.m. He then walks towards the school, climbs a gate and heads towards the west side of the facility. He starts shooting before going inside at 11:40 a.m., without any opposition, according to Victor Escalon. Contrary to what had been previously reported, Salvador Ramos was thus not confronted by a police officer assigned to the security of the primary school when he arrived on the scene.
If a guard – apparently unarmed – watched the entrance, he could not stop him, reports The world. A back door to the building was unlocked which allowed the attacker to enter the premises. He therefore encountered no resistance to his murderous expedition.
- 11:44 am: the exchange of fire with the police, the carnage begins
Police arrived at the scene four minutes later and exchanged fire with Salvador Ramos who then barricaded himself in a classroom. The three police officers ask for reinforcement and that’s where “the carnage begins”, according to Steven McCraw, the director of the public security department.
“It’s time to die,” he reportedly said as he walked into a classroom, according to a 9-year-old student who survived and confided in BFM TV. “When I heard the shots through the door, I told my friend to hide under something so he wouldn’t find us, testifies the young boy. I was hiding and I said to my friend that we shouldn’t talk to each other because he might hear us”, continues the young boy who is one of the five students to have hidden under the tables, says The Dispatch.
Salvador Ramos then murdered 19 students, aged 9 and 10, and the two teachers present, according to the authorities. The children’s identities have been exposed by their families who share their pain on social media. Among them, Xavier Lopez, a 10-year-old boy who loved to dance, or Amerie Jo Garza, a little girl with a broad smile who had just turned 10.
The two teachers were Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia. The first, aged 44, had been teaching at Uvalde for 17 years, according to her family and the primary school. Married, she was the mother of a daughter. The second, mother of four children, had been married for 24 years to her husband Joe Garcia, who died Thursday of a heart attack according to the press, and “of grief” according to family members.
- 12:40 p.m.: the border police enter the school
Outside the school, the police break the windows of the other classes and evacuate pupils and teachers. According to parents of students who had gathered outside the establishment, quoted by The worldsome fathers who wanted to storm were “brutalised” by the police.
“The police did nothing,” protested Angeli Rose Gomez, mother of two children attending school in Robb, who confided in the wall street journal. “They were standing right in front of the fence. They weren’t going inside or running anywhere,” she adds of the officers. She claims that federal police officers handcuffed her as she tried to encourage law enforcement to enter the school. A Border Police tactical team finally went to the school an hour after Salvador Ramos arrived, around 12:40 p.m., according to Victor Escalon.
- 1:06 p.m .: the assailant neutralized
Inside the establishment, the police prepare their intervention. They position themselves in the hallway and in the adjacent classroom to prevent the assailant from escaping.
He was finally neutralized by the elite unit of the border police – Mexico being located nearly 90 km from Uvalde – at 1:06 p.m., according to The world.