Friends, family describe TX shooter; he would roam streets shooting people with BB gun, parents have rap sheets

As the nation mourns yet another senseless school shooting, people close to Salvador Ramos, 18, say he was a “bullied” loner who “just slowly dropped out” of high school.

“Salvador was a loner,” Manuel Alvarez, the boyfriend of Ramos’s mother, told the Daily Mail. “He didn’t have many friends.”

According to Alvarez, a friend would “occasionally” visit the teen at his house, but he hadn’t noticed a visitor in about six months.

That Ramos would enter Robb Elementary School and fatally shoot 19 children and two teachers is, says Alvarez, is shocking.

“I never expected him to do what he did,” the 62-year-old boyfriend said. “He’s quiet and kept to himself most of the time. I really only had a handful of conversations with him.”

Alvarez wasn’t close to the troubled teen — a fact he reiterated to the Daily Mail.

“He stayed to himself,” he stressed. “I really didn’t have a relationship with him. He didn’t talk much, he was a loner.”

Ramos reportedly stayed in his room much of the time, hitting a punching bag or watching TV. The teen reportedly wasn’t allowed to have guests over to the house, and an argument over Wi-Fi led to Ramos packing up and moving in with his grandmother, Celia Gonzalez, who lives just a few miles away.

Before heading to the school, Ramos would shoot Gonzales, though, unlike the school children, Gonzales is expected to survive her wounds.

“I’m not exactly sure what it was about,” Alvarez said of the argument. “I stay out of it.”

 

It was another family argument that reportedly preceded Ramos’s rampage.

In the days leading up to the massacre, Gonzales was allegedly in the process of evicting Adriana Reyes, Ramos’s mother, over drug use. On the morning of the shooting, Ramos was heard arguing with Gonzales over a cellphone bill.

Both Reyes and Ramos’s father, Salvador Ramos, Sr., have a rap sheet. In July 2002, the elder Ramos was arrested for an assault resulting in bodily injury against a family member and served 180 days in prison. In 2011, he faced a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of marijuana.

Meanwhile, the younger Ramos’s mother has been arrested on more than one misdemeanor offense, including property theft.

According to neighbor Ruben Flores, 41, Ramos and Reyes often engaged in screaming matches that ended in the cops being called to the house. In now-deleted Instagram videos, Ramos filmed his mother’s police interactions.

“He’d call his mom a b–ch and say she wanted to kick him out…” said a classmate of Ramos, Nadia Reyes. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”

A graduate of the high school Ramos attended says he often heard the teen and his mother arguing during Xbox bouts, with his mother saying he needed to go to school and do something with his life.

Upon moving to his grandparents’ house, says grandfather Ronaldo Reyes, 72, Ramos slept on a mattress on the floor in the front room. A convicted felon, Reyes, who is prohibited from having guns in his house, said he had no idea Ramos had purchased two AR-15s and was keeping them in his home.

Stephen Garcia, “best friend” to the shooter in middle school, said Ramos was the “nicest” and “shyest” kid who “just needed to break out of his shell.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, Garcia said Ramos was bullied for having a stutter and a lisp and was often taunted with gay slurs.

“He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” Garcia said. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything.”

After moving away, says Garcia, Ramos grew his hair long, began dressing all in black and wearing military boots, got into multiple fistfights at school, and eventually, he stopped showing up.

 

In the months before the shooting, Ramos was working at Wendy’s and was reportedly angry that he wouldn’t be graduating.

By that time, Ramos was finding it hard to keep friends. At night he would allegedly cruise the streets and fire a BB gun at random people as they passed by. He often took “things too far” with “weird” comments, such as telling one friend that he wanted to join the Marines “so he could kill people.”

According to one anonymous classmate who claimed to be somewhat “close” to Ramos, the teen was a fan of the combat game “Call of Duty.”

Wendy’s co-workers told the Daily Beast that Ramos was “quiet” and “anti-social,” with an “aggressive streak.”

“He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking, ‘Do you know who I am?'” said one co-worker. “And he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies.”

“He would, like, not go to school… and he just, like, slowly dropped out,” said one anonymous classmate. “He barely came to school.”

For days before entering Robb Elementary, Ramos allegedly sent his friend a picture of his AR along with a backpack full of ammo.

When his friend asked why he had so much firepower, Ramos reportedly replied: “Don’t worry about it.”

Melissa Fine

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