‘I got a knife. Pull your gun out!’ Uvalde victim’s grieving great-grandfather confronts cops with a knife

The grieving great-grandfather of a 10-year-old Uvalde mass shooting victim originally went viral for pulling a knife on two police officers but is now being praised for the impassioned plea he wound up making to those same two officers.

Video footage recorded by journalist Jon Farina of Status Coup News shows the great-grandfather, identified as Ruben Mata Montemayor, making a scene at what appears to be a makeshift memorial for the Uvalde victims.

Two officers arrived on the scene in the video. To be clear, the officers were not with the Uvalde Police Department. According to reports, they were Texas police officers who’d traveled to Uvalde to provide assistance in the wake of last week’s mass shooting.

Regardless, the video begins with the two officers showing up, only to be immediately confronted by Montemayor, who remarks that “it didn’t take you but a few minutes” to arrive on the scene.

It appeared to be a jab based on how long it’d taken Uvalde Police Department officers to respond to last week’s mass shooting.

“I’m gonna show you something,” he then says as he pulls out a knife and flashes it.

“I got a knife! Pull your gun out! I’m not going to kill nobody! But I got a knife! Let’s see how brave y’all are with your guns!” Montemayor says, once again seemingly mocking the officers’ widely condemned response to last week’s mass shooting.

Watch:

Bystanders rush to Montemayor’s side and urge him to relinquish his knife to them before the police are forced to take action.

Thankfully, he hands his knife to one of the bystanders, who in turn hands it to one of the officers.

Montemayor then leads everybody to the makeshift memorial — specifically to the part of the memorial honoring his great-granddaughter, Alexandria Rubio.

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It’s at this point that the man begins speaking from the heart and letting out all his pain.

Where were you people were when she was there at the time in the room, and they were calling for help, and you policemen didn’t do nothing about it? Where were you now that 911 call from the young little boy … and he called you. You know why he called you 911? Because his mother, his father, and the teachers told him call 911, and the police will be there to save you,” he says.

Were you there? No, you were not there. Bring my great-granddaughter back. Put me in jail. Kill me. Do whatever the hell you want. But I’m telling you, where were you when they were calling for your help?

Watch the full video below:

For some reason, a man begins arguing with Montemayor, telling him that the past is the past and that it’s essentially time to move on.

“But we gotta do something. We gotta train the policemen. They were trained to defend them. Where were they? They were taught to go in there and kill the son of a b–ch that killed my great-granddaughter,” Montemayor fires back in rebuttal.

But the man pushes back further, claiming “this” isn’t the solution — that the solution is in Washington, D.C. It’s presumed the man is a gun control zealot.

“No, it is! That’s why I’m here, to put it on TV so they can hear what it is. I hope they know I don’t like the police. How in the hell can they sleep knowing that they could have gone in there and saved my great-granddaughter and all her friends,” Montemayor replies.

He’s not alone in feeling such anger and rage. The Uvalde Police Department has faced intense, nationwide criticism over its clear-cut mishandling of last week’s mass shooting.

Investigations into the Uvalde Police Department have been launched by both the Texas Rangers and the Justice Department.

“On Thursday, May 26, the New York Times reported that the Texas Rangers had been called to investigate the police response. And on Sunday, May 29, after repeated calls from politicians, the Justice Department announced it would be launching its own investigation,” according to The Cut.

According to reports, Uvalde officers stood for roughly an hour outside the classroom inside which shooter Salvador Ramos had barricaded himself.

“They could tell me, ‘Oh, we made a mistake. We made the wrong decision’. But my great-granddaughter is not coming back to me. She’s not coming back to me, and if we keep going to where we’re going, we’re going to have more school kids that are innocent [get killed],” Montemayor says later in the video.

The Daily Beast notes that Montemayor “heard the shots” from shooter Salvador Ramos “ringing out from just down the street.”

“A Vietnam veteran, Ruben has seen his fair share of death and violence. This isn’t his first rodeo with death. But today he is fighting back tears and trying to come to terms,” the outlet reported last weekend.

Vivek Saxena

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