When a young man never got over being bullied in the fourth grade, his mind began to spiral into insanity. Even as he continued to show all of the signs of being a budding killer, they were ignored time and time again. Even as the signs he showed grew more intense, nobody took him seriously until it was far too late.
This is the story of one of the darkest chapters in American history. School shootings are unfortunately not as rare as they should be. However, most of the time they are committed by a student at the school who is shooting at kids relatively their own age. There is something even more sinister about a grown adult coming back to school just to assault young children.
This has happened on a few occasions, most notably with Sandy Hook and the Nashville shooting. This crime isn’t mentioned too much in the grand scheme of things, but as you’ll come to see, it is definitely one of the worst there’s ever been. Salvador Rolando Ramos was born on May 16th, 2004 in Fargo, North Dakota.
He was the second child to his mom, Adriana Martinez, and his dad, Salvador Ramos, Senior. His parents weren’t together for too long before they ended up splitting up. This led to his mom, a native of Uvaldi, Texas, taking the two kids back home with her not too long after he was born.
Yuvaldi isn’t the biggest city out there. In fact, it only boasts a population of about 15,000 people. It’s in the United States, but it’s only about 50 mi from the Mexican border and has an almost 80% Hispanic population. Salvador’s mom herself seemed to prefer speaking Spanish in general and likely wanted to return to this sort of environment.
Salvador’s dad was barely around, only having spotty contact with his kids from that point onward. Salvador was fairly close with his extended family, though, especially his cousins and grandparents. Still, the family was in poverty, and that’s putting it pretty lightly. Salvador himself would later say, “I used to literally sleep with a towel instead of a blanket. My dad was never here.
He was either in jail or out of town. Salvador’s dad was no stranger to the law. In 2000, a few years before his son was born, Salvador Senior got into a scuffle with a police officer and then made a run for it. He was charged with resisting arrest, pleaded no contest, and got sentenced to 180 days in the county jail.
He also had to apologize to the police in writing. Later on, he was also hit with a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. This happened after he hit a man named Enrique Jesus Perez with a beer bottle. Given that he pled no contest and it was only a class A misdemeanor, he would only end up spending about 30 days in jail.
He was ordered to have no more contact with the man and had to take part in periodic drug and alcohol testing for a while afterward. This does not mean that Salvador’s mother was an angel, however. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Just before Salvador was born, his mom, Adriana, was charged with writing a bad check for about $20.
At the time, she was dirt broke. She only earned about $500 a month from her job at a Chinese buffet along with about $223 in welfare and $269 in food stamps. Back then, she was living in a small apartment with six other people. Her trial came around and she plead guilty to the charge about a year after her son was born.
She had to pay a fine of $250, court cost of 218, and was sentenced to 180 days in jail. But since she plead guilty, she was given probation instead along with 25 hours of community service. However, only 2 years later, she was hit with an assault charge after she beat up a family member. Once she agreed to enroll in anger management counseling, the charges were dismissed in 2007.
She was also stuck with the court fees again, this time shelling out $1,928. Things were made even worse when Salvador’s mom became more and more addicted to drugs. It has been said by many around town that she enjoyed taking part in a good bit of methamphetamine. Even Salvador’s old grandma, Celia Sally Martinez Gonzalez, had been hit with charges that haven’t been specified.
Whatever they were, she was given two years of probation in order to pay a fine and court cost herself. Long story short, the family was no stranger to crime. Despite everything he had going against him, Salvador seemed to be quite normal as a little kid. Once it was time for him to enroll in school, he began attending a local preschool in the area, the Dalton Early Childhood Center.
there. His teacher described him by saying, “Salvador is a remarkable little boy. He is a motivated thinker and learner. He enjoys learning new things and is always excited to share his knowledge.” However, eventually it was time for Salvador to move on to higher grades. He started going to Benson Elementary School.
However, he would transfer out of Benson and then go on to attend the Anthen Elementary School in second grade. By third grade, things were starting to fall apart for him. He was behind his fellow students academically by a pretty noticeable margin. This was notably not due to a lack of effort with his teachers even praising his dedication to a degree, but because he simply couldn’t keep up.
He was labeled as at risk after failing test after test until the pattern couldn’t be ignored. At one point, someone in his family recommended speech therapy for him as well. After that, Salvador’s family would take him out of Anthen and enroll him at a different school once again. He would come to attend the Rob Elementary School in the fourth grade.
Here, things went smoothly for a very short while. At this school, it was said that Salvador was reluctant to interact with other kids due to his prominent speech impediment. Partially due to this and his own refusal to interact with the other kids, he became the target of bullying very quickly. He spent his fourth grade year in room 112 of the school and quickly came to associate that classroom with nothing but negativity.
As the bullying became more frequent, he was made fun of for his speech, his very short hair, and for wearing the same clothes every single day. The latter of the two were mainly due to his poverty growing up. But it should be known that according to the school itself, 86% of the children there were under the poverty line.
It appears that Salvador simply had it worse off than the rest of them. As the year continued on, he had zero friends. At one point, Salvador faced something that he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life. One day, a girl tied both of his shoelaces together while he wasn’t paying attention. When he stood up and started to walk forward, he fell flat on his face in front of the whole class and hurt himself.
This led to a lot of laughing and ridicule. While it may seem trivial to an adult in hindsight, it was something that deeply embedded itself within Salvador’s mind and never really left him. It didn’t help matters that his teacher didn’t really seem to help or intervene in any way. Salvador’s family at one point reported that even the teachers at the school were picking on both him and his cousin.
At home, things were even worse. Living in a trailer with his mom that his grandpa owned on the aptly named Hood Street, Salvador faced something that was much worse than his bullying at school. According to a girl that he would come to date and grow close with later down the line, Salvador admitted to her that he was sexually abused by a man his mother was dating during his childhood.
When he told his mother about it, she sided with her boyfriend and refused to believe him. So, he was left with no choice but to put up with it, in his mind, at least. He had reached out for help and had his hand slapped away. After that, Salvador’s relationship with his mother would never recover. In fact, it only continued to get worse over the years.
Eventually, Salvador was moved back to Benson Elementary School for the rest of his elementary years. After that, he moved on to middle school, attending Flores Middle School starting in the sixth grade. Again, keeping up with the trend, he was moved to Morales Middle School before 8th grade. Still, things didn’t really improve for him.
According to his later writings, he was still bullied throughout middle school as well. However, his bullying in middle school increased even more when Salvador, according to his own later writings, was caught masturbating in class. He said, “I was getting bullied because I started beating my dick in seventh grade.
Cried in front of the whole class, yelled at by multiple people, slapped so hard I had a bruise on my cheek for a couple days. This is when he started to get into trouble himself, although it was fairly tame at the time. He was written up for various offenses now and then, like for repeatedly calling a teacher by his first name, calling other students gay, or drawing inappropriate pictures, but it wasn’t anything too serious.
Eventually, Salvador moved on to high school. This time he would actually stick to one school throughout his tenure without transferring. The Yuvaldi High School. This high school is where Salvador would truly begin to spiral. He continued to get into trouble. This time for things a little worse than before.
He would hit other kids, refuse to do his homework, and walk out of inschool suspension whenever he was put in there. Salvador’s performance in high school was so bad that some of the school staff even recommended that he start taking some tutoring courses. When his grades fell even more, they recommended that he start attending special education classes.
However, his family wasn’t on board with either option, and it seems that he never went through with either of them. Salvador’s grades were so abysmal in his first year in high school that he didn’t pass the 9th grade and was forced to repeat it the next year. The next year, he didn’t pass it either. When he was forced to repeat it once more, he still didn’t pass it.
By the time Salvador was on his fourth year of high school, he was still in the ninth grade. This was clearly something that would embarrass him as he would call himself by the grade that he should have been in at the time. While Salvador suffered from what he felt was the worst bullying in his life in the fourth grade, he felt personally that he didn’t actually start to go downhill until middle school and that things only got worse from then on out.
He later wrote in the notes app on his phone. From sixth grade to sophomore year, I was bullied. Did you know I skipped a lot of 7th, 8th, and 9th and 10th grade? Because I was bullied. 10th grade, I probably went to school for like 2 weeks. Ninth, I missed over three months of school. Eighth, I missed so much school.
And seventh, I barely, so I haven’t even been to school that much at all. I used to cry almost every day when I went home how much my life sucked. I used to walk home and cry in 8th grade cuz I was getting bullied. There’s so much times I walked home crying. And there’s more stuff, but I don’t want to get into it that it’s bad.
I have been bullied/h harassed my whole school career. Slapped, slapped with gerx, tripped, punched, picked on, pushed down the stairs. I had to walk out of school so much times I would cry all the way home because people were so mean to me. I was getting bullied at a lunch table and I was crying so much I had to switch to a younger table.
I was told constantly I was ugly as [ __ ] Even girls would bully me and I was scared to say anything to anyone. I asked the counselor to switch my classes and she was asking why and I didn’t tell her because I was terrified of what would happen to me. And that was sophomore year. I was so depressed in 2020 crying myself to sleep almost every day because I was felt so lonely.
I wanted to get a job, but that would mean I couldn’t see Steven, and he is my only friend, so I meant that I would be even more sadder. There is even a video recorded by Salvador’s classmates in high school that shows him getting picked on at school. Once again, being taunted for wearing the same thing to class every day.
Be a big pan, [laughter] big laughing. That’s how you always wear you always wear the same clothes every day. You ain’t got no outfit every [ __ ] day. You wear the same thing to shut the [ __ ] up you got to say. You ain’t going to say nothing. Say to my [ __ ] face. Oh god. However, this might have actually been in good fun.
It’s important to note that others have said the opposite, that Salvador was not bullied, and he was usually the one picking fights himself. This could have been about high school specifically, not about elementary or middle school, but some have come forth on video saying so. Salador Ramos was a boy who was not bullied.
He would try to pick on people, but fail, and it would aggravate him. I would like to get that out of the way. He was not bullied. He prior and I don’t see this covered and I’m going to put this out there. He would hurt animals. He was not a good person. He would go to the parks and try to pick fights. Salvador had been turning away most people who he considered to be friends.
Whether it was his attitude or just the weird way he act in general, he was raising eyebrows all around. I wasn’t going to start being his friend no more because like he was being weird with like not only me but like a lot of other people. He had scars on his face and I remember somebody asking him like, “What happened? Are you okay?” Cuz he showed up to school with them.
And he just straight out told them, you know, with a smile, I I did it myself. After being called ugly for most of his life, Salvador came to obsess over his looks. He went through so many physical changes that it later became somewhat of a meme online that he never looked like the same guy in any of his pictures.
He admitted to having an eating disorder at the time from this obsession as well, suffering from both anorexia and bulimia. He wrote, “I was sickly skinny because I would never eat because my ED was so bad. I had to go to the hospital because I would barely eat. I was anorexic back in late 2020. I was sticking a finger in my mouth and throwing up all my food back in January.
” By this time, Salvador did have that one friend named Steven who lived quite a ways away. This is likely why he felt that having a job would limit how often he could see him anymore, and he was already pretty limited on that. He also had a girlfriend named Regina, the only one that he ever had or ever would have.
Still, none of this did anything to improve Salvador’s mental state. That was still rapidly going down the drain. By his final year of high school in 2021, Salvador was spiraling more than ever before. His thoughts and writings grew more violent in nature. He began to show signs of cruelty towards animals, a desire to sexually abuse women and men, and an interest in mass violence.
Feeling like he had very little to lose at this point, he began to fantasize about beating and violating his bullies. He wrote, “But damn, you called me a quiet kid and wonder why I’m so antisocial. Well, I told you I hate people and I will never change. And I wish someone tried to bully me. I would beat the living [ __ ] out of them and rap them till they [ __ ] bleed.
” His fellow students started to notice as well. One student at his school named Crystal later told the media that he gave off a bad vibe, saying that he looked like he might shoot up the place. They mostly said it was a joke at the time with her adding, “You heard people joke and say, “He looks like a school shooter.
” Before clarifying that it wasn’t really only him that got this treatment, saying, “I’ve heard it said about other people.” While Salvador didn’t have any documented mental illness, it isn’t hard to come to the conclusion that he was suffering from something. He himself had Googled the term sociopath on his phone and reached out about possible treatment, even getting an email back.
He never did pursue the treatment any further than that, however. Instead, Salvador became completely addicted to this phone, especially Instagram. He would interact with well over a hundred Instagram posts in one way or another each and every day, often staying on it until anywhere from 2:00 a.m.
to 4:00 a.m. before getting a bit of sleep. He had at least 20 known Instagram accounts that he used to get all this done. His girlfriend said he would stay up all night where sometimes he would sleep barely. His girlfriend notably lived a good distance away from him in San Antonio. Given that Salvador never really bothered learning how to drive and didn’t have a license, seeing her often wasn’t a possibility.
Given that both his only friend and his girlfriend lived so far away, he still effectively felt like he had nobody in his life. Regina even said he didn’t have any friends. He had no one. Salvador left home one day and came back a little beat up and told his family that he had been jumped by some kids he used to think were his friends.
After that, he started trying to learn boxing and MMA off the internet. Given how he wanted to be internet famous, he decided to film his journey from time to time, taking videos of himself wrestling with a friend or punching a sandbag that he hung up in his room. Because of COVID lockdown, Salvador had been out of school for a while by 2020.
By the time 2021 came around, it was time to go back to school full-time again as normal. However, his grades had gotten so bad. He was bombing every standardized test, and he had skipped so much school that the school staff found it kind of pointless. He had skipped over a 100 days of in-person classes since 2018.
At the end of October 2021, the staff at Yuvaldi High School withdrew him from his courses. Part of this was because the school was so lax in enforcing any rules when it came to truency. If the rules were enforced at all, it was very seldom and inconsistent. It didn’t appear that anyone from the school did much to reach out to his parents about this decision before it was made, if they did anything at all.
Regardless, Salvador was now out of high school. He never graduated from the ninth grade in his four years there. Things grew even worse for him when his girlfriend decided to dump him. She said that it was due to his both creepy and obsessive nature, calling it out of the ordinary bad. Regina said that Salvador repeatedly told her that he wouldn’t live past the age of 18, either saying that he would take matters into his own hands or that he simply wouldn’t live a long life without elaborating.
She said that he would often get angry at her and threaten her. It happened so often, in fact, that she couldn’t even remember how many times it had actually happened. After the breakup, Salvador proceeded to harass both her and her friends over the internet for a good long while. Even when she got a new boyfriend, he still continued.
Regina Regina Siller, you know, if you saw me right now, you would [ __ ] on your boyfriend. Regina Sil [laughter] Regina, send me a voice message. I want to hear your voice. Hurry up. Stop playing games with me. Hurry the [ __ ] up. Salvador, you’re scary. Like legit, you are scary. You have a mental illness and and you need to get therapy and something.
One of his mom’s many ex-boyfriends described Salvador as being a loner who punched holes in the wall whenever his mom would make him mad. Over the year, he started dressing in exclusively all black, bought a pair of combat boots, and let his hair grow long and unckempt. With these two major humiliations in a row, Salvador started to overcorrect in the other direction.
He began to make it appear online as if he were something really special. He would often write that he was going to be famous someday. He texted a friend and told him, “We’re going to be famous as fuck.” with a bunch of chart increasing emojis implying some sort of personal or financial growth. He wrote messages to himself in his notes app as well, telling himself how great he was.
One of them read as, “I’m an unknown genius and I will impact society in a good way by September 2022.” Still, Salvador wasn’t actually doing anything. While he had previously wanted to fit in, he now showed no interest. He didn’t even have much to do with his family. His sister had graduated and left home. He hated his mom.
And he had no interest at all in her boyfriends. He didn’t go to school. He didn’t have a job. And he almost completely withdrew from society aside from his social media obsession. S continued to harass a lot of different girls online. He often made a lot of them extremely uncomfortable, usually making some sort of advance before immediately resorting to making rap threats or telling them they were going to die in one way or another.
In one leaked conversation, he seen saying hey to a random girl before telling her he would worship her. When she didn’t respond immediately, he told her to jump off a bridge. As his fascination with Instagram grew, so did his interest in other social media platforms as well. He became very active on Tik Tok, YouTube, and for some reason a French live streaming app called Yubo.
He tried to network with other people his age on Snapchat, and started playing video games online as well. He was especially into Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Fortnite. Most of his online accounts were notably very edgy. Almost all of his usernames referenced a desire for revenge, or the idea of conflict in one way or another.
Some of his usernames and addresses were [email protected], [email protected], I’mma kill you6, revenge, s revenge, Salvador fights, disrupts, and the biggest op. People who play games with Salvador online would come to describe him as an [ __ ] saying that he would often fly into a rage whenever he lost. He would especially take his anger out on any female players in the lobby on either team, usually going to private messages just to harass them even afterwards.
He was said to have terrorized them each for a good amount of time with graphic descriptive threats of rape and violence against them. Salvador’s interest in everything dark had been growing at the same time. Things to that effect were often on his mind. He took a big interest in watching gore videos online, anything from murder to gruesome accidents.
As his desire to become something more than a single dropout grew, Salvador began to develop a bit of a god complex, and he showed it in a very childish way, he started to refer to other people online as humans, implying that he was something above that. He said he had difficulty connecting with other people as a result, saying that he lacked empathy.
He really came to believe that he would be famous one day, most likely on either Tik Tok or YouTube. Even though both of his accounts barely got any views at all, each and every singular view would immediately go to his head. He would brag online that he was already getting famous and would call other people randoms, saying that they were lucky to even be interacting with him at all.
In late 2021, Salvador decided to get a job in order to get some funds. He first started working at a What a Burger. Here, he would face another humiliation when an ex-friend’s grandma saw him there. She took a picture of him and sent it to her grandson, telling him that this is how he would end up if he ever quit school.
This idea caught on, and some people began to reach out to Salvador just to make fun of him for working there. He didn’t even keep that job for very long anyhow, as he didn’t even last a month before he began to threaten to sexually assault a female co-orker. Pretty quickly after, Salvador got another job at a Wendy’s instead.
This time, he would actually hold the job, doing so by neglecting to interact with the other co-workers as much as he could, at least on the job itself. While his manager said that he rarely interacted with anyone on the job, his female co-workers reported that he would often send them inappropriate text messages after hours.
According to his manager, he left to try and pick fights with co-workers. If anyone criticized him, he would puff out his chest and scream, “Do you know who I am?” The truth was, they didn’t. Nobody could figure out exactly why he thought so highly of himself. They began to make fun of him as a result, calling him school shooter because of his long, messy hair and his black jackets.
One of his co-workers at Wendy’s later said that he was troubled and, in their words, not a good person. This person said he quote put himself in a box and would not talk to or associate with anyone he worked with. Outside of this job, Salvador also started to help out his grandfather with his business, repairing air conditioners.
For this, he would often be paid in cash. Given that he still lived at home and had no expenses, Salvador only hoarded his money. His family felt that he was most likely saving for a car or hopefully to move out. He would later come to prove that this wasn’t the case. He started to brag to his friends that he was quote saving for something big, telling them that they would see him on the news one day.
Still 17 years old, he started to spend his money once he had a substantial amount saved up. While he couldn’t get his hands on a gun, he could buy some random gun- rellated accessories and tactical clothing that wasn’t actually harmful on its own. He ordered some rifle slings and shinuards online at first. Then he ordered himself a tactical vest.
He also bought a red dot site for a gun that he didn’t have, but knew he wanted to buy in the future. Frustrated and not wanting to wait, he began to ask several people he knew over the age of 18 if they would buy guns for him, including his sister. They all refused. Salvador had developed a fascination with school shooters.
While he had put in a little effort to hide that fact at first, he quickly adopted it as a quirky trait of his. He started to use his own school shooter nickname, calling himself Yubo school shooter while he would live stream. He would even pose in his tactical vest while holding his BB gun, trying to convince his viewers that it was a real gun.
Even so, he was never banned despite being reported. Things took a much darker turn for the worst when Salvador became enthralled with a documentary on Netflix. That being Don’t [ __ ] with Cats hunting an internet killer, a documentary about Luca Magna. Luca had killed an international student, abused cats, and fled to another country.
Like Salvador, Luca also had a desire to get famous, and he was willing to attain that goal by any means necessary. Given how he had killed multiple cats, the internet was rightfully outraged and did everything they could to identify him and track him down. Salvador didn’t learn at all from that aspect of the story.
One day in 2021, he posted a video online that showed him driving around with who he called someone he met on the internet holding a clear plastic bag with a dead cat inside. He later threw the bag into the street and spit on it while his anonymous friend laughed. They then took a video wearing a tactical vest and firing BB guns at people.
The next video they took together was of an ambulance responding to a car accident, an accident that he said his friend from the internet caused. It isn’t clear if he had actually killed this cat or if he just found it that way and wanted people to think he had. If he had, it was yet another clear sign that he was a budding serial/mass killer.
And according to some online, he probably did. Some who had seen Salvador streaming on Yubo said that he actually did live stream himself abusing and killing animals, at least one of which was a cat. They said he would also live stream a few attempts to kidnap girls in order to force himself upon them.
On some live streams, he even boasted for the first time that he wanted to commit a school shooting one day. All of these instances were reported to Yubo, who promptly ignored each and every report. Other users would call him out as well. for everyone. Everyone is worth deserves to get raped. No, just you, buddy. Out of everybody in the world, just you.
You deserve death row. You deserve to get curb, my guy. Given that he wasn’t seeing a ban anywhere in sight, he continued down this road. He bragged that he would drive around with his friend and fire his BB gun at people from the car, sometimes egging other vehicles in the process.
and he started to post pictures to Instagram of semi-automatic rifles that he wanted to buy one day, like the DDM4V7. Still, despite all of his bragging about planning something big and calling himself a school shooter, it doesn’t appear that Salvador had any real concrete plans laid out at the time. It appeared that they had started out as more of a fantasy or maybe even a character that he started to lean more into as time went on.
That would all come to a change when 2022 came around. This was when a pivotal moment would take place in Salvador’s life. A fight with his mother that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back in their relationship. In or around early March of 2022, he got into a fight with his mom after he turned off the Wi-Fi.
Given that he decided to film the fight for an Instagram reel, it’s possible that he started it for content. In the video, the argument grew more and more aggressive with Salvador calling her a [ __ ] repeatedly. While they had argued countless times in the past, this one became one of the worst. It was to the extent that the police were called, but no arrest was ever made despite Salvador’s mom saying that she was very afraid of him.
Because of that, Salvador began looking for some way to move out. Over the year, he had gotten more support than usual from his extended family. His grandfather had been paying him for his help working, and his cousins had been slowly growing closer to him. Given how strung out his mother was, Salvador’s grandma, who they called Sally, had gradually been becoming more of a mother figure to him and a sister over the years as well.
So Salvador decided to reach out and ask if he could live with his grandma only a few blocks away from his old elementary school, Rob Elementary. In that house, which was pretty small, he didn’t have a room of his own. Instead, he slept on the living room floor. This setup wasn’t really working for him.
A day came when he confided in his older cousin, who was also staying there, that he didn’t have much of a desire to live anymore. The two ended up having a good, long talk together. After the cousin was pretty convinced that she had gotten through to him and that he had changed his mind. However, this same sort of thing would happen with an uncle afterward as well who also thought that he seemingly peptalked him back into staying alive.
They had no idea how wrong they really were. By this point, Salvador was making some real plans to carry out some sort of shooting. While we will never know for sure, it’s highly speculated that he decided to target Rob Elementary for one simple reason. the fact that he had supposedly faced some of his worst bullying in that fourth grade classroom.
He started to buy some more accessories for a shooting in the leadup to his 18th birthday. He bought himself a large number of 30 round magazines, up to 60 of them according to some sources, a holographic sight, and a Hellfire Gen 2 Snap-on trigger system, which is a trigger modification that allows for much faster semi-automatic fire.
On March 23rd, someone noticed a suspicious person dressed in all black with a large backpack who was walking around the Rob Elementary campus. While that person has never been identified, it would be quite the coincidence if it wasn’t Salvador. Salvador started spending time with a young cousin who was attending Rob Elementary at the time as well.
The two would often play Roblox together. While it seemed like a nice gesture to those on the outside, Salvador’s motives were anything but pure. He began to quiz his young cousin on many different things related to the school. He asked for specific details on how the class schedule works and how the lunch periods played out. One of Salvador’s friends told him that month in a conversation on Instagram, “People at school talk [ __ ] about you and call you school shooter.
Salvador apparently didn’t care that much. On April 2nd, Salvador sent one of his friends on Instagram a message asking, “Are you still going to remember me in 50 days?” That friend jokingly responded, “Probably not.” to which Salvador responded with, “hm, all right, we’ll see in May.” Salvador’s relationship with his mother never improved again in the slightest.
With his father, he felt less of a sense of hatred and more of a sense of apathy. Given how little his father had been in his life, Salvador Senior felt his son had no love for him. When he saw him sometime in April, he noticed that Salvador had done some seemingly self-inflicted cuts to his face. He also heard his son say that he would be doing something soon, although he didn’t elaborate on what it was.
That May, Salvador started ramping up his plans to carry out a shooting. His birthday was fast approaching, taking place on the 16th. He continued to lean into the school shooter persona, creating another note on his iPhone that said, “Ask your school about me.” Then on May 10th, he took a screenshot of his bank account summary showing that he had $5,127.
78 in savings left. That night, he wrote another note saying, “I’mma be all over the news in 12 days.” meaning he was planning his shooting for the 22nd. 2 days later on the 12th, he went to a website where he could create and display his own countdown timer. He set it for the 16th, his birthday. He started to drop hints on social media as well.
Hints that were anything but subtle. 2 days later on the 14th, he sent a private message on Instagram that read, “10 more days.” Now implying that he was planning something big on the 24th. This friend responded to him, noting his ominous tone, saying, “Are you going to shoot up a school or something to that?” Salvador responded with, “No, stop asking dumb questions.
You’ll see.” Many other people who Salvador chatted with online corroborated this, saying that he had been making cryptic comments about dates for a while now, sometimes with him even saying that he would appear on the news soon. Salvador was overjoyed to watch the clock hit midnight on May 16th. He was now officially 18 years old, and nothing would be holding him back from buying a gun any longer.
Exactly 18 minutes after turning 18, he logged onto a website and began the process to buy a DDM 4v7 rifle from Daniel Defense. Getting the confirmation email, he briefly opened up the calculator app to check his funds. Satisfied, he went through with the purchase. The total cost was $2,28.28. While it wasn’t all of his savings, it would be a very large portion of it.
The gun was all set to be shipped to a gun store in Nuvaldi called Oasis Outback, where he would be able to pick it up later. This gun had been at the top of his wish list for a long time, and he couldn’t wait to finally get his hands on it. Afterwards, he made himself another countdown timer. This time for May 23rd, once again changing the date for when he wanted to carry out his attack.
On May 17th, only one day after his birthday, he went out to the Oasis Outback store in person to purchase a different gun. Salvador got his uncle to drive him out to the gun shop, saying that he wanted to go to a restaurant next door to get something to eat. After his uncle dropped him off, he went inside.
The gun he would buy would be a Smith and Wesson M&P15, a rifle similar to the one he had bought previously. This one costed him $1,8142. When he later regrouped with his uncle, carrying a long box and no food, it was pretty clear that he had actually bought a gun. Given that he had no experience with guns, his uncle noted that he struggled to get a magazine into the rifle, causing it to come falling out onto the floor a few times.
Salvador started to look up different gun ranges in the area to learn how to use it, but he wasn’t able to find one that allowed the type of rifle that he was using, so he gave up. He then realized that he didn’t even know what kind of ammunition his own gun took, so he Googled that as well.
He then asked Google whether a magazine can be reused once it’s emptied. He then looked up where to buy juggernaut armor, the fictional armor from the Call of Duty series. He also began taking pictures of himself with his new guns. When his friends felt that he was just being edgy as usual and that the guns weren’t real, he showed them the receipts, the literal receipts.
As word got around, rumors began to spread quickly. Another friend reached out to Salvador to tell him that one of their acquaintances was going around telling everyone that he was planning on shooting up a school. He had likely hoped to hear Salvador confirm that this was not the case. Both Salvador’s grandma, Sally, and his cousin told him that he couldn’t have a gun in his house.
So, his uncle agreed to store it at his own. However, it wasn’t long before Salvador took the gun from his uncle’s home and snuck it back to his grandma’s house. He hid the gun somewhere outside for the time being, according to a text he sent one of his friends. On May 18th, Salvador also purchased a very large amount of ammunition for his rivals, anywhere from 1,657 to 1,740 rounds in total, depending on the source. This costed about $1,761.50.
He now had $256.58 left in his savings. It isn’t known who drove him out to the store on this outing. Salvador came to learn on May 14th, only days prior, a man named Payton Jindren had carried out a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. On the 19th, he began searching for information related to that shooting.
Although information was fairly sparse at the time. Then the next day on May 20th, Salvador was excited to see an email at around 11:00 a.m. stating that his gun had arrived at the store. He was finally ready to go pick up the DDM4V7 that he had first ordered. He was down at Oasis Outback within 7 minutes to pick up his gun.
Once again, getting arrived from his uncle. This time, he told his uncle that he was only getting some ammunition for the first gun, with it already having slipped that he owned that one at least. Upon receiving his gun, Salvador asked the store staff to install his holographic sight for him. Salvador admitted that he had never fired a gun in real life before, let alone attached a sight.
Satisfied with the setup, he rushed home to show off his new weapon. He immediately started taking some pictures of the gun to send to some friends. Once his background check was finished, it showed that Salvador had qualified for the purchase. While buying a few guns of that nature in a short time requires the shop to report to the ATF, only the purchase of multiple handguns in a short period would have required them to report it to the local police.
The owner of Oasis Outback said that Salvador seemed like an average guy, noting that he didn’t have any apparent red flags or suspicious activity. All he noted was that he was alone and fairly quiet. He did remember questioning him as to how an 18-year-old could afford two expensive guns like he had bought. Salvador responded that he had simply saved up his money over time.
Other customers within the gun store described Salvador very differently, however, noting that he seemed very nervous and appeared odd. They even specifically stated that he looked like a cliche version of a school shooter. One thing they all agreed on was that he gave off a bad vibe. With that, Salvador had the gun that he wanted so badly.
He made his way back to his uncle’s car, once again carrying a long box. This time, his uncle didn’t inquire as to what it was. He simply felt that this was the ammunition and magazines he had mentioned previously. The next day, on the 21st, Salvador displayed his self-proclaimed genius by googling how many days till May 24th.
It was 3 days away. He was so excited to use his gun that he couldn’t even think straight. He posted a picture of his two rifles to his Instagram account. Salvador ended up getting a text from one of his friends saying that he was going to be in Yuvaldi soon and that the two should hang out. Salvador, for reasons unknown to his friend, responded, “If it’s before May 23rd, I’m down.
” Given that Salvador had nothing going on and that he didn’t appear to be moving, this would have been odd. This friend said that he would probably be going in July or August. Salvador responded with, “Damn, that’s too late.” before sending him a message saying, “I’m about to get two ARs. Want to see?” When his friend agreed, Salvador responded with pictures of his guns before saying, “Just spent 1,652 on ammo and 2,150 on some AR.
” The friend, noting his usual school shooter persona online, responded with, “SMH, giving me school shooter vibes.” To everyone who knew him, Salvador’s true nature was as clear as day. However, none of them wanted to believe it. Salvador could no longer wait for what he was about to do.
He was giddy at the idea of carrying out a shooting on his old elementary school. While many other shooters seemed to fall into more of a depression leading up to the day, even expressing doubts at what they were about to do, Salvador was very much the opposite. On Sunday evening, May 22nd, he once again pulled out his phone to Google how many hours till May 24th, 11:00 a.m.
The next day, he was just as antsy as ever. It was now the day before his planned massacre. He messaged a younger German teenage girl he talked to online saying, “I got a little secret.” When she asked him what it was, he said it was impossible for today, telling her that he was still waiting for something to be delivered by 7:00 p.m.
Later that day, at around 5:00 p.m., a shipment of hollowpoint bullets from optixplanet.com arrived for him. That day, someone called a threat into the Yuvali school district. A young man had called and said, “You know your school just got shot up, right? How did that feel?” When the person on the other line tried to ask more questions, the man hung up.
He then called again later from a different number. In the end, this wasn’t even reported to the higherups for whatever reason. It hasn’t been stated for certain that this was Salvador, but again, it would have been another big coincidence if it wasn’t. When night came around, Salvador couldn’t sleep. Right before midnight, he Googled, “How long till 11:00 a.m.
tomorrow?” Salvador couldn’t count up to 11 from midnight. In private messages to other friends, Salvador implied that the next day would be significant to him. Many have speculated that he had chosen the 24th as the day of his massacre for one simple reason. It was a local tradition that seniors would return to their elementary school to walk the halls at lunchtime.
That would explain why he had chosen 11:00 a.m. on that specific day and why he grilled his cousin on how the lunch periods worked. In his mind, the people who bullied him while he was in the fourth grade would be there that day. Salvador had actually spoken with a friend shortly before that this time in the fourth grade had affected him deeply, saying that he had very bad memories of it.
Little did he know, the date for that walk had been moved up. The seniors had walked on the 21st instead. At 11:13 p.m., Salvador texted one of his online friends saying, “I have something outside in the back of the house, and I can’t bring it inside till I make sure my grandma’s asleep. I don’t want her to see it.” He later sent another message to that friend, this time saying, “I’m going to bed.
I already got the thing right next to me.” Salvador then finally got some sleep, cuddling all night on the floor with his rifles, dreaming of the carnage he was about to carry out the very next day. On the morning of May 24th, 2022, Salvador was sitting at home with his grandparents.
At the time, he was sending out some text messages to the girl in Germany that he had been talking to for a while that he had originally met on Yubo. He tagged her in a picture of his guns and DM’d her, writing, “I’ll text you in an hour, but you have to respond. I got a little secret. I want to tell you.
He stopped by his room to make a short video for social media showing his clothes that day. Over the past couple of weeks, Salvador’s grandmother, Sally, had been threatening to remove him from her mobile plan. While he was texting this girl, she called customer service to do just that. Salvador continued to message at least one person.
He had a FaceTime call with the girl in Germany. Afterward, he ended the call and continued to send her messages over Facebook Messenger. Immediately after their call, Salvador’s grandma came to him and had an argument with him about being a failure. She told him that she was on the call with AT&T to cut him off from the phone plan. Salvador texted the German girl, telling her, “I’mma tell you right now. Hold on.
Waiting for this [ __ ] I’mma do something to her right now.” Oh my god. She’s on the phone with AT&T about my phone. It’s annoying. What? After that, Salvador decided to add one more death to his plans for the day. He left to go get one of his rifles and returned to the living room. He pulled it up to his 66-year-old grandma’s head and shot her directly in the face.
He then collected himself for a few moments before messaging the German girl once again. He told her, “I just shot my grandma in her head. I’m going to go shoot up an elementary school right now.” This girl didn’t believe that he was telling the truth. She responded with a sarcastic cool. Little did she know she had been receiving accurate live updates.
Shortly before, an awards ceremony was being held at Rob Elementary School. It was one of the last days of school before summer vacation, and many students were set to graduate soon. Some students chose to go home after the ceremony, but many others decided to stay behind and watch movies in their classrooms with their friends.
Salvador took his grandma’s keys and made his way outside. He threw all of his gear into her Ford F-150 before sliding into the driver’s seat himself. He then turned the key and set off on the short journey to Rob Elementary. Little did he know his grandma was still alive. Although she was severely injured with the bullet tearing through the left side of her face, it hadn’t gone through her brain at all.
She managed to slowly begin stumbling from the home in order to get help from the neighbors. Despite not having a driver’s license, Salvador did his best to drive out to the school himself. He did not do well. Driving toward Rob Elementary on South Grove Street, he lost control of the truck completely and went crashing through a barricade and straight into a large ditch a short distance away from the school.
At least one of the wheels on the truck was completely ruined, meaning that it was no longer going to be of any use. So, he decided to set off on foot. With what had happened with his grandma, Salvador was late in his plans. When he crashed the truck, it was now 11:28. Salvador hopped out of the truck and into the ditch.
He was wearing all black clothing with his tactical vest over that carrying ammunition inside. He was carrying one of his rifles, the DDM4V7, and seven magazines of ammunition. He decided to leave the other gun in the crash truck. Two men at a funeral home across from the school noticed the crash and made their way outside to make sure the driver was okay.
They got fairly close to the truck, standing above the ditch and looking down at him from the road. At that time, Salvador was getting his gear ready. He popped into view from inside the ditch and began to fire at the two of them. Luckily, neither of them were hit. They turned around and began to run back toward the funeral home.
Immediately, someone inside called 911 and reported the shooting. In addition, the police started receiving a volley of calls related to the crash pickup truck in the ditch as people drove by. A coach at Rob Elementary, Yet Silva, was outside with some of her third graders when she noticed a backpack come soaring over the fence and onto the grass inside the school grounds.
It was then that she saw a young man dressed in black climbing over it. The next thing she saw was the barrel of his gun rising up to shoot her. She ran from that field and towards her classroom. She grabbed the school radio and shouted, “Coach Silva to office. Somebody just jumped over the fence and he’s shooting.” Coach Silva then ran out to the third graders outside and ordered them into lockdown.
While she expected to hear a lockdown notification, she heard no such thing for quite a while. While the principal had tried to issue an announcement, she was having trouble with the Wi-Fi. Salvador was then seen making his way over to the fourth grade teacher’s parking lot, firing his gun periodically.
This was when a teacher outside of the school made the first 911 call, urging the local police to come out to the scene. This teacher then ran into the school through its west entrance and shut it behind her. This door would remain unlocked as, for whatever reason, it was only possible to lock from the outside with a key. Salvador began to fire toward the school from outside, shattering some classroom windows.
A janitor was notified to start locking all of the doors of the school, but he grew scared from the gunfire partway through and hid in the cafeteria. At around the same time, a Yuvaldi Consolidated Independent School District, or UCISD officer, Sergeant Coronado, first arrived on scene, having heard the last 911 call himself. There he saw two Yuvaldi police officers who had already arrived on scene.
Sergeant Coronado asked them where the shooting was taking place. They said that they didn’t know. Salvador, meanwhile, continued to fire. Given the sound of the gunshots were echoing outdoors, the police thought that they were actually being shot at. They then noticed a group of children in the playground running away from the school.
That was when one of the officers saw Salvador making quick pace toward the school. He had a clean shot and raised his rifle, asking permission from Sergeant Coronado to shoot. Sergeant Coronado would never give him that permission. If he had given the permission to shoot this clearly armed gunman shooting at young children, they would have saved many lives that day.
Unfortunately, Salvador continued to the school uninterrupted. This would be the first of many, many mistakes that fateful day. Immediately after, a school resource officer came driving toward the school at a high speed. He saw a teacher outside, immediately mistaking him for the shooter. He drove right past Salvador, who was in clear sight, and began chasing the teacher down in his car instead.
It was now 11:33. Only a few short minutes had passed. This was when a fourth grade teacher in room 102 heard the gunshots, thinking it was the sound of metal hitting brick. In a way, it was. She looked outside and saw Salvador with his gun and bag walking up the sidewalk to one of the entrances. She ordered her students to get down and hid behind a curtain herself.
Salvador then made his way up to the west entrance, the same door that the teacher had just ran into previously. Given that the door was unlocked, he was able to enter the school completely unimpeded. As Salvador entered, he was seen on the school security camera raising his head and looking around with a maniacal grin.
He shouted something along the way, which is thought to have been, “Little kids, time to wake up.” At the same time, he was blaring music from either a speaker or his phone all the way. He walked a short distance forward and turned to the right. He already had his target area in mind, the connected classrooms that made up 111 and 112, the same place where he had been bullied himself in the fourth grade.
He wasted no time walking straight to that room without giving any attention at all to any other potential target. While walking, he taunted, “Ready or not, here I come.” As he made his way toward that room, a child came down the hall and looked around the corner to see what was happening. That was when Salvador pulled up his rifle and aimed it toward the window on the door to room 112.
The two teachers inside had received an email about an active shooter in the school. One of them, Irma Garcia, got up to look out the door to see what was happening. It was at that very moment that she saw Salvador. As she blocked the door with her body, he immediately began to fire through the door multiple times, hitting Irma in the side and at least one student.
He fired off several shots, causing students inside to scream out in terror. As the shots rang out, the teacher in the connected room, Arnu Reyes, heard what was happening. he said. All of the sudden, we hear the first shots. Boom, boom, boom. In the confusion, none of them knew what the sounds were. No announcement had been made for the school to go into lockdown.
And unless you were lucky enough to have been one of the people to get an email and read it instantly, most people were unaware that a shooting was even taking place. As the sound of gunshots continued, students began to ask what was going on. Mr. Reyes thought it might be a drill until he saw sheetrock come flying through the wall and into his classroom as a bullet shot through.
He told the students to get underneath a long table that was placed against a wall. He asked them all to hide underneath and pretend like they’re sleeping. He didn’t want them to see what might happen next. He began to make his way over to his own position that he had learned from previous drills in the school, an area of the room where he could hide while also seeing the doors and windows.
Salvador then paused from his shooting momentarily before moving closer to the door which was in a small inlet area in the hallway. He then put his arm through the door and unlocked it. He moved inside and began firing again, asking, “Are you all ready to die?” This time, firing many more shots than before.
One little girl in the room recalled seeing many of her friends fall to the ground as she herself collapsed due to the bullet fragments in her side, shoulder, back, and neck. Salvador backed out into the hallway once more. He then looked at the connected classroom, room 111. Much like before, he began to fire through the window on the door and into the classroom.
The lock to room 111 had actually been broken for quite some time. The teacher had even sent numerous reports to the school asking for it to be fixed, all of which had gone ignored time and time again. Because of that, they were sitting ducks. When Salvador realized that he could open this door, he shoved the door open before stepping back into the hallway to fire another volley of bullets into the room.
He then walked inside of the room and took aim at Mr. Reyes. Mr. Rehea said, “When I went around my kidney table to get to my spot, I got shot and I fell to the floor. By then, he had already entered my room.” Salvador, coming into the classroom, shouted, “Well, look what we have here.” as he began to fire indiscriminately around the class.
Aiming at each student one by one, he shot them multiple times each. Most of them either screamed for help or beg for him to stop, only for him to taunt them even more before firing a volley of shots at them, sometimes up to 10 per person. At some point during this wildfiring, Salvador shot a bullet through the wall that would go on to hit another teacher, Miss Aila, in room 109 as well.
After that, everything got quiet. Mr. Reyes couldn’t hear any more sounds coming from any of his students. Salvador scooped up some blood from one of the students on his fingers. He made his way over and scrolled LOL on the classroom’s whiteboard. He then sat behind the teacher’s desk for a few moments. Shortly after, a girl in room 112 began to shout at police outside who have shouted, “Yell if y’all need help.
” Saying, “We’re in here.” Salvador had thought that they were all dead. He stood up and went back to room 112 through the connected door in the classroom. Seeing Irma Garcia on the floor, he backed her further into the class. He shouted, “It’s time to die. You guys are mine.” As he entered inside, he then made eye contact with Garcia one more time.
He shouted, “Good night!” before firing multiple shots toward her and killing her for good. He then noticed a girl trying to call 911 on a phone, shooting her in the head on the spot. He said, “You’re all going to die.” before once again unleashing a stream of gunfire into the remaining students and the living teacher. He stopped to load a new magazine into his gun.
While he did so, someone in the room began begging for their life. As soon as he popped the magazine in, he started firing indiscriminately around the room once more. Mr. Reyes hearing this from the other room felt that they all must be dead now. Salvador then called out asking if anyone needed help. When one little boy stood up, he pulled up his gun and shot him dead that instant.
2 minutes after the massacre in the classrooms began, three UPD officers with two rivals entered into the school from the same entrance that Salvador had used. Shortly after, the UCISD chief, Pete Ardodondo, along with another UCISD officer and two UPD officers, came in through the south entrance. One officer remembered seeing smoke and fog, noting that both of the classrooms were dark.
Another remembered the smell of gunpowder hanging in the air, saying that the halls looked cloudy. Chief Ardondo noticed shell casings all over the ground. All of them could still hear Salvador continuing to execute children inside. After feeling that he had killed every single person in room 112, Salvador made his way back into 111.
At this point, he had fired well over a hundred rounds into all of the students and teachers inside. At that same time, two of the little girls in room 112, 11-year-old Mia Serio and Khloe Torres, grabbed a phone off of their dead teacher, Irma Garcia, and started to call 911. They begged for them to please send an officer into the classroom, telling them what was happening and saying that they were still in danger.
What the hurricane? No, there’s a school shooting. Okay. Yes, ma’am. I have multiple units there. Are you with officer? Are you barricaded somewhere? I’m in classroom. What’s the classroom? 102 102. 112. 112. 112. Yes, ma’am. What’s your name, ma’am? Chloe. Please help me.
There’s a lot of dead bodies. Please. 112. Yes, ma’am. Please seek help. Be quiet. I am on tell everybody because I don’t know. Nobody wasn’t even me. I know how to handle these situations my dad taught me when I was a little girl. Send help from my teachers. I feel alive, but they sh Mia then laid on the ground right on top of one of her dead friends and smeared their blood all over her face.
This was done in order so that she herself could play dead more convincingly. She then lied there and waited for help and waited and waited. Sergeant Coronado went with a few other officers and Chief Ardondo towards a 111 and 112. He didn’t hear any more gunshots taking place as the whole building went quiet. As he approached, he could see clear bullet holes in the sheetrock.
On his body cam footage, another officer could be heard saying, “It’s an AR.” showing that they certainly understood the kind of gun they were dealing with. Another officer, Officer Paige, stopped near the room as well. Throughout this time, Mr. Reyes could hear the police out in the hallways, praying that they were about to make their way inside.
Each and every time he heard them, they never came in. Eventually, he heard the police call into the classroom, asking Salvador to come out and talk, saying that they didn’t want to hurt anyone. Ava Morelis, the other teacher in room 112, called her husband, Ruben Ruiz, a Yuvaldi Consolidated Independent School District officer who was on scene to tell him that she was inside the classroom and would die if she didn’t get help.
Reuben tried to push forward through the hallway, but he was detained by other officers who took his gun from him and dragged him off the scene. Ava would die from her wounds after. It was around this point that the officers got a report that another woman had been shot nearby. This call was about Salvador’s grandmother, who had gotten help from her neighbors.
One officer and some EMTs made their way out to the scene. While Sally could walk, she was obviously in very bad shape. They put her into a stretcher and loaded her into an ambulance. Salvador’s own uncle came to call 911, knowing that it must be his nephew who was shooting. He’s my nephew, man. He’s He’s the shooter.
I was wondering maybe he could he could listen to me because he does listen to me. Do you know of any change in his behavior over the last couple of days? No. No. No. Nothing. Nothing. He just said that he said that he was mad and that his grandma sadly was um just bugging him too much. Soon after, one of his cousins called as well, fearing that he might try to come to her house and shoot her too.
The active shooter, he’s my cousin, and I don’t I don’t want him to come to my house. As they approached the room, they tried to move as quietly as possible. From the north side, Lieutenant Martinez decided to peek into the inlet area between the rooms. As he did so, Salvador fired at him from inside the classroom.
Some fragments of the wall grazed the top of his head, causing him to start bleeding. Another officer, Sergeant Canales, was similarly hit by material that scratched his ear. In the panic, none of the officers shot back towards Salvador. The officers then retreated from the classrooms and back down the hallway.
It was here that another critical mistake would be made. Chief Ardodondo, feeling that the shooter was cornered, decided not to classify the ongoing case as an active shooter case. Instead, he classified it as a barricaded subject case. This was significant because it meant that they felt their shooter was contained.
So, instead of actually entering into the classrooms and trying to save some of the kids who were still alive, they were going to leave Salvador in there with them until they could successfully negotiate him out. For the time being, all they would focus on was evacuating the rest of the building little by little while they left the kids and the teachers to bleed out.
Once the police began to cordon off the outside of the school, parents began begging the police to go in there and try to save their kids. On video, when being asked why the police weren’t going in to rescue the children, one officer responded by screaming, “Because I’m having to deal with you.” When the police refused to go in, some parents tried to enter into the building themselves.
[snorts] Officers started to shove the parents back and even tackled them to the ground. They told them that they would be tased if they tried to enter the building any further. Many videos were taken of these altercations and uploaded to the internet. At one point, the police pepper-sprayed one parent trying to get into the building.
Another mom was thrown into handcuffs when she tried to enter. When they released her from the cuffs, she was able to jump the fence, get to the school, and take her kids before the police found her. While you may think that their concern was to keep parents from entering into the school and being shot, their tyranny spread to other areas as well.
Some children who evacuated were sitting in a bus parked alongside the street. One parent was full-on tazed when they tried to get their kid from the bus to take them home. It was then at 11:42 that the school finally announced a lockdown, saying that it was due to quote gunshots in the area, not even specifying a shooting at the school.
They made this announcement on Facebook of all things. In the announcement, they even lied and said that the students and staff were safe inside the building. Then, and only then, a substantial amount of students began to be evacuated. With Salvador now in the room with nothing to do, he set his sights on Mr. Reyes, who he suspected might still be alive.
While waiting on the police, he decided to begin torturing him. First, he picked up a thermos of cold water and poured it all down his back. Mr. Rehea said that he was actually lucky that he was in as bad of shape as he was. Since he couldn’t move and was barely even breathing, it meant he showed no reaction.
He couldn’t have reacted if he tried. Salvador told him, “You’re going to die and no one’s going to miss you. You’re a big loser.” Still convinced that Mr. Reyes was alive. Salvador then dipped his hand in a pool of his own blood and began to splash it into his face repeatedly. Getting no reaction, he splashed more and more of it. At that point, Mr.
Reyes’s cell phone, still on his desk, started ringing. Salvador walked back over to the desk and picked up the phone. He then took the still ringing phone and dropped it onto Mr. Reyes’s back, almost as if giving it to him. He then picked up the phone and dropped it on him again about four more times. At that point, Mr.
Rehea said that he wished he would have just shot the phone to stop all the noise. He said that this all went on for a painfully long period of time before the police outside began to call out to Salvador again. Sir, this isn’t with the school district police. Can you please put your firearms down? You don’t want anyone else hurt, sir.
At that point, Mr. Reyes said that all Salvador did was clear his throat. Then, convinced that Mr. Reus was alive after all. He shot him once more in the back. Even still, he didn’t lose consciousness. While everything was a blur, he would be awake from then on out. Chief Ardondo called the UPD landline, telling them, “We have him in the room.
He’s got an AR-15. He’s shot a lot. We don’t have firepower right now. It’s all pistols. I don’t have a radio. I need you to bring a radio for me and give my radio for me. I need to get one rifle. I’m trying to set him up. I need this building surrounded with as many AR-15s as possible.
He then requested a swap team to the school. Another UPD officer calling a dispatcher said, “We believe that he is barricaded in one of the offices. There’s still a shooting.” When he was asked if the door was locked or anything like that, he responded, “I am not sure, but we have a halagan to break it.
” A halagan is a crowbar-like tool that can be used to pry open a door. Salvador continued to linger around the classroom. From time to time, he would fire his gun again, likely at any students he suspected might still be alive. Mr. Reyes would not be the only one inside the classroom that Salvador would come to torture out of boredom. While waiting for the police to come inside, he went around the rooms finding any kids who appeared to be alive.
He would spit on them, curse at them, and even stomp on their heads and limbs to the point of leaving impressions with his shoes. A United States Border Patrol tactical unit rushed out to the scene after getting a message from his wife who had been a teacher there. He was actually at a barber shop getting a shotgun that his barber lent to him and rushed out to the scene.
He helped to evacuate some of the children. A US Marshall on the scene was able to supply a ballistic shield. Other border patrol agents arrived as well, although they didn’t bring the breaching tools. Little did they know the lock to 111 was broken anyway, and Salvador couldn’t have locked it if he tried. They didn’t try to simply open the door.
More shields were brought into the school. However, they would have been useless if they were put to use as only one of them was graded for rifles. Most of the lowranking officers on scene began to grow frustrated at the lack of action, whispering to each other that they needed to get inside the classroom as soon as possible.
I know [laughter] in there. I know. Yeah. with kids. Hey man, you want to let the kids out? Salvador through the door, yelled at the officers. Don’t make me come out first and make it complicated. Salvador then yelled, “Hey, you little [ __ ] bitch.” ated a student. The student cried for help. Come on, guys.
Salvador then taunted him with, “You’re alive, but you’re almost dead. You’re going to die, little boy.” The police could clearly hear this from the hallway, as it is even audible in the footage. They still didn’t intervene. Soon after, Salvador yelled to the cops, “If you don’t come in, I’m going to kill the bitch.
” [laughter] Quickly, quickly open the window. He then continued to taunt the little kids inside. Because of what had happened to their grandmother, Salvador’s cousin knew exactly who the school shooter was. As soon as she heard about it, she made her way out to the scene. She told the police who the shooter was and begged for them to kill him already.
She revealed that her son, Salvador’s young cousin, who he questioned about the schedules, was inside the building. He’s being she’s being transported to San Antonio. I need you to please help us because this guy [ __ ] take him out. That’s my stupid ass nephew. [ __ ] kill him. Help us. Help us. He’s doing it because his mom and every At 12:10, the first group of US marshals arrived on the scene to assist, having come from 70 mi away.
Soon after, a DPS special agent said, “If there’s kids in there, we need to go in there.” Uncaring, another officer responded with, “Whoever is in charge will determine that.” Anyone who suggested that they stormed the room was quickly waved off the scene. The UCISD chief, Pedro Ardodondo, was the de facto man in charge on the scene, but he was doing very little to actually get to Salvador.
It has been speculated that Arrodondo may have assumed that all the children inside were already dead and instead wanted to focus on gathering more equipment before performing a breach of the room. It wasn’t long before the little girls in classroom 112 called 911 again. They informed them that they were still very much in danger.
They’re inside of the building. Okay, you need to stay quiet. Okay, they’re inside the building. We just need to stay quiet. The police still didn’t enter into the room. Lieutenant Mariano Parus, the UPD’s acting chief, was told about the call to 911, saying that the room was full of victims and many were still alive.
Child is like in a room full of victims. Full of victims. Full of victims. Child call 911. The room is full of victims. Child 911 call. He then entered into the school and calmly told the other officers, “A child just called that they have victims in there.” Before walking outside again. A child just called that they’d have victims in there.
The girls then called again for a third time, once again begging for help and saying that a lot of people inside were dead. Aridondo was more concerned with putting a sniper on the roof of the school, wasting valuable time by instructing officers on how to best do that. While he was doing so, the girls called 911 a fourth time, saying that they had found eight to nine students that were still alive and could be saved. Again, they were ignored.
Lieutenant Mariano Parus was once again informed of the call. He walked back into the building, mentioned it briefly, and then went back outside to call himself to hear the information. Okay. In the call that you got in from the uh from the one of the students, what was what did they say? Okay. Chloe is going to be Chloe.
Uh she’s in group 112. Nine students that are still alive. So, how many are still alive now? Um, eight to nine are still alive. She’s not too sure. Yeah. How many more? She’s not too sure how many are actually possibly. We’re trying to make sure. Okay. After ending with that, okay, thanks. He walked back inside and informed some of the other officers about it.
However, when he then talked to a Texas Ranger, he neglected to mention the living children in the room. He then left the school and didn’t come back again for whatever reason. When Pete Ardodondo heard of the calls from the students inside classroom 112, he didn’t change the situation from a barricaded suspect case into an active shooting case.
In fact, there is more evidence that he tried to hide that information. Some officers were seen on video being told that there were no children inside the classrooms at all. Do we have anyone that’s hit on this side? Huh? Any other kids or anyone hit? No, we don’t know anything about that. No kids are Who’s asking for the pull? Everything is everything’s closed.
Like the the the kids are not in there. Can we check with the office to be sure if anyone now at 12:17, roughly 45 minutes after the massacre in the classrooms began. The school reported once again over Facebook that there was an active shooter on campus and that the authorities were on scene. After Arrodondo was heard outside screaming to officers, “Tell them to [ __ ] wait.
No one comes in, likely referring to the concerned parents. Pete Ardodondo would start to spend most of the rest of his time in the hallway trying to negotiate with Salvador inside the classroom. Each and every time, he would get no response. Still, he kept calling out to him over and over and over again, wasting at least 30 minutes on this tactic despite getting zero results.
Mr. Ramos, can you hear us? Mr. Ramos, please respond. Can you hear us, sir? Please don’t hurt anyone. These are innocent children. Please put your firearm down. We don’t want anybody else hurt. Seenor Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos. Minutes later at 12:21, Salvador fired four more shots inside one of the classrooms.
A couple of minutes later, Arodondo, either lying or very uninformed of the situation, said, “We’ve lost two kids. The walls are thin. If he starts shooting, we’re going to lose more kids. I hate to say, we have to put those to the side right now.” He began to try and speak to Salvador through the door again, asking him to surrender, and again, he got no response.
He tried again a few minutes later, again, to be ignored. Salvador shot several times again at children he believed were alive in 111. He then shouted to the police, “Hey, come and get him.” A minute later, he yelled, “Hey, come inside, bitch.” Followed by something inaudible. It’s highly likely that Salvador was planning to die from the police’s gunfire, much like many other mass shooters plan.
if he were to negotiate, he wouldn’t get that from them. He preferred to sit and wait for them to barge into the room and go out in a blaze of gunfire. When that didn’t happen, he began to grow frustrated, never responding to the negotiation, but shouting taunts at them from time to time. Even he couldn’t seem to understand why they weren’t coming in to get the kids.
Arrodondo was growing annoyed as well. He knew that he had dug his grave with this one. He had wasted a lot of valuable time, saved no children, and still hadn’t even gotten into the room. He began to tell other officers, “People are going to ask why we’re taking so long. We’re trying to preserve the rest of the life.
There is a window over there. Obviously, the door is probably going to be locked. That is the nature of this place. I’m going to get some more keys to test.” Starting at 12:30, more officers entered into the south door and walked past Chief Ardondo and Sergeant Coronado, stacking up on the sides of 111 and 112 themselves, waiting to breach the rooms.
After five more minutes, the H Halligan tool that they wanted but didn’t need finally arrived. The little girls in 112 called 911 once again, saying that Salvador had fired a shot again. They were told to stay on the line and be quiet. 6 minutes later, after waiting around, Ardondo said, “Just so you understand, we think there are some injuries in there.
” And so, you know what we did? We cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have any more besides what’s already in there. Obviously, this was while the girls in 112 were begging for the dispatcher to send the police inside. They said that they could clearly hear them outside talking. Orodondo didn’t seem to be so willing to enter.
He told his officers, “If y’all are ready to do it, you do it, but you should distract him out that window.” As the girls once again beg for the police to come inside, the DPS captain Joel Bettincourt on police radio gave a command for the breachers to wait, saying, “The team that’s going to make the breach needs to stand by.
The team that’s going to breach needs to stand by. Another 15 minutes later, at 12:50, some of the Border Patrol officers got a janitor’s key to enter into room 111. They then turn the key in the unlocked door, waiting to go inside. The Border Patrol had decided to finally make their way in regardless of what Aridondo wanted. Commander Guerrero had another agent give him cover with the one rifle-graded riot shield and entered into the room with his gun drawn.
Those two, along with two others, entered into the classroom. That was when Salvador, who had been hiding in the closet, kicked open the door with his gun drawn and began to fire at the officers. The officers fired back, finally killing Salvador and ending the rampage. The police began to frantically enter into the room and started taking some students out, unsure of who was alive and who wasn’t.
The scene was so grizzly that many of the police officers ran outside to vomit. If it tells you anything as to how bad the scene was, officers were heard on body cam footage warning the others to avoid stepping on skull fragments littered throughout the classrooms. Some students at the school have said in the years since that limbs were severed by the shots as well as heads.
Most of the police had never seen anything like that in their entire lives, especially when it came to such young victims. Nevertheless, there were still some inside that could be saved. Blood coated the hallways as they rushed to get them outside. The scene was chaos as police officers were ordered to shut up so that they could listen for students voices, but they continued to shout over each other.
Stretchers were wheeled into the rooms and students were loaded onto them. However, it was found that the majority of them were dead, including every single student in room 111. 19 students and two teachers were killed in the shooting. Two of them were 9-year-olds, Jacqueline Jaylen Kazeres and Elelliana Ama Garcia.
The majority of them were 10-year-olds. Navia Alyssa Bravo, McKenna Lee Lrod, Jose Manuel Flores Jr. Uzziah Sergio Garcia, Amiri Joe Garza, Xavier James Lopez, Jacece Carmelo Louis, Tess Marie Mata, Althia Haven Ramirez, Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez, Maitate Ulana Rodriguez, Alexandria Nia Rubio, Jayla Nicole Silguero, Elelliana Cruz Torres, and Roelio Fernandez Torres.
Two of them were 11year-olds, Miranda Gail Matthysse and Leila Marie Salazar. And finally, two teachers had lost their lives in room 112. 48-year-old Irma Linda Garcia and 44year-old Ava Murz. 18 people were injured, including 14 kids, Mr. Reyes, Salvador’s grandma Sally, and the two police officers that were grazed in the gunfire.
However, several of the injured wouldn’t live much longer, dying on route to the hospital. Had they had been rescued earlier, there was a chance that they would have survived. They had lived for 70 minutes with no care. After all, that extra 70 minutes in intensive care very well could have saved them. The surviving kids from room 112 were put on a bus in order to regroup with their families.
This included the two girls who had been calling the police along with at least one other boy. In the end, 11 kids and three others were admitted into the hospital for emergency care. It was found that a further two had died during their arrival. Some of them, including Salvador’s grandma, who was airlifted, were taken to the University Hospital in San Antonio.
At 2 p.m., parents of the children at the school were notified that they could now come pick up their kids. Given that the bus services were cancelled, parents from other schools were asked to do the same as well. It was announced that the school term for that year was officially over, with only a few days having remained anyway.
Graduation ceremonies would be cancelled as well. Shortly after, the Yuvaldi Memorial Hospital held an emergency blood drive. The South Texas Blood and Tissue Center told the public that they would urgently need donations after the shooting. They sent about 15 units of blood to Ualdi on a helicopter to use in the hospitals there.
It wasn’t long before 2,000 people had donated blood. In total, 315 rounds were found inside of the school. 140 of them were spent casings while 173 others were live. 922 more rounds were found outside the building, most likely in the rest of Salvador’s magazines that he left behind in the truck. Some of the rounds that Salvador fired weren’t even found, with it being determined that he fired 164 times in total.
The police had fired 35 rounds themselves in total, eight in the hallway and 27 in the classroom where Salvador was killed. Many of the students who died in 111 and 112 were put into body bags and left in the hallway of the school. That is where they would remain for the night. The crime scene photo of the hallways of the elementary school filled with body bags in the dead of night has haunted those who have seen it.
Some parents would have to wait until late at night and into the early hours of the morning for the final confirmation of their children’s deaths. Immediately following the Rob Elementary School shooting, the Yuvaldi Consolidated Independent School District Police Department and the Yuvaldi Police Department came to be criticized heavily for their response to the incident.
As controversy broiled, Salvador Ramos’s remains were going to be held by the Uvaldi County Coroner for weeks. All of the local funeral homes refused to have any sort of service for him out of both disgust and respect for the victims. Eventually, he was cremated by Cast Ridge Mortuary in Crystal City.
He was buried in a cemetery under a fake name, that being Lonnie, with no date of death in hopes of deterring vandalism. Salvador’s mom came to speak to a Mexican TV station, saying that she had no explanation as to why her son did what he did. She stirred up controversy even further by strangely stating, “He had his reasons for doing what he did.
” Telling viewers, “Please don’t judge him.” She added, “I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me.” She said that Salvador was not a monster. While admitting he could be a bit aggressive, Salvador’s father condemned the attack that much more, taking a lot of the blame onto himself. He said, “He should have just killed me, you know, instead of doing something like that.
” A memorial had been created outside of the school for the victims in the attack. It was covered in balloons, candles, and crosses. One local man made 21 different crosses for each of the victims, inscribed with their own names, and set them up outside the school. A lot of people came from outside the city to contribute to the memorial and pay their respects.
Many local businesses offered free headstones and funerals to the victims. Even different food trucks and restaurant owners sent food to those affected by the shooting as well. It was announced by the UCISD superintendent Hal Harold that Rob Elementary School would never be reopened.
It was set to be demolished to avoid retraumatizing anyone related to the shooting. A board meeting was held and it was decided that the students and staff would move to a new campus. Mia Serio, the little girl who called the police at least five times while covered in blood and pretending to be dead, was said to have been left extremely traumatized.
She was left unable to sleep with large patches of her hair falling out regularly. An online fundraiser was made to help pay for her therapy with a goal of $10,000. She ended up receiving almost 20 times that with the fundraiser ending at $199,000. She was a little too afraid to talk on camera at first, but expressed that she wanted to share her story so that others could know the horror of what it’s like to live through a school shooting and hopefully to prevent more.
Keep in mind she was only 11 years old. Or things that you want different. What would it be? to have security. Do you feel safe at school? Why not? Cuz I don’t want it to happen again. And you think it’s going to happen again? When Chief Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, who failed to mention the 911 calls from the classroom, was interviewed again after that information was known.
He said that he couldn’t remember the calls. He instead claimed, “The last thing we thought was that the shooter had actually shot the kids. We thought he had shot up in the air, broken the lights. We had no idea what was behind those doors. But in a leaked call with the Texas Rangers, he ended up letting it slip that he very well knew the kids were inside.
The room was extremely dark and we didn’t know where he was or the kids were standing. They were by him or not knowing what was behind the doors.” Joey Garcia, the husband of one of the teachers who died in 112, Irma Garcia, died only 2 days after the shooting from a heart attack while attending a memorial for the victims.
His family later stated that the heart attack was due to the grief of losing his wife. Their four children were left without parents. The UCISD created a fund for those kids and other victims. Soon after, an anonymous donor paid $175,000 to go to the funerals. Catholic Extension, a nonprofit organization that tends to finance impoverished Catholics, announced that it was giving 30 full scholarships for the students wounded in the attacks to attend a different school in Yuvaldi.
Soon after the massacre occurred, the FBI and the ATF began to assist the local police in their investigation. They quickly grabbed Salvador’s guns and took them in for an analysis. Soon after, the Texas Rangers began to assist as well. The response by the police to the shooting was so abysmal that even the United States Department of Justice announced that they would be reviewing the law enforcement response at the request of the mayor of Yaldi himself, Don Mclofflin.
In the beginning, misinformation about the massacre and contradicting accounts between the different agencies who assisted in the response were making the investigation very difficult. Some of them claimed that Salvador used a handgun. Others correctly stated that it was a rifle. Some claimed that his body armor made it even more dangerous when it came to be known that he had no body armor at all.
Some claimed that an officer exchanged gunfire with him outside the school, but then it came to be known that an officer had asked for permission to fire, but no gunfight took place. It was said that this was a school resource officer, but then it came to be clear that the school resource officer had driven off to pursue a teacher.
It was an absolute mess. At first, the Texas Department of Safety or DPS Director Steve McRaw said that the police engaged immediately. He said they contained the gunman in the classroom and put the tactical stack together in a very orderly way and breached. However, he soon changed his story to add that they were forced to delay the response because they needed specialty equipment, armor, snipers, and negotiators.
The DPS even blamed a teacher for letting Salvador in, saying that she had propped open the door. This was not true as the reason he got in was due to the fact that the door could only be locked from the outside. While the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, originally praised the police for their response, it was before he knew all the details.
When he came to learn the facts, he quickly changed his tune and began to call for an investigation into the lack of initiative displayed by the police. He said, “Bottom line would be, why did they not choose the strategy that would have been the best to get in there and to eliminate the killer and to rescue the children?” The governor announced that he had been misled and given inaccurate information, saying that he was absolutely livid about it.
The mayor of Yuvaldi was especially frustrated at the governor’s initial praise. 2 days after the massacre, at a press conference, a DPS official was asked whether the police had made a critical error. He said that they didn’t have enough information to answer definitively just yet. However, that same day, another DPS officer defended the police, saying, “If they proceeded any further, not knowing where the suspect was at, they could have been shot.
They could have been killed and the gunman would have had an opportunity to kill other people inside that school. The Uvaldi PD police chief, Daniel Rodriguez, similarly defended his officers that same day, saying, “It is important for our community to know that our officers responded within minutes.” The former police chief of Austin and Houston, Art Aivado, disagreed, tweeting, “We don’t have all the particulars right now, but when the gunfire is ringing out with the police are trained, expected, and required to engage, engage, engage. This is a moral
and ethical obligation. However, it was only a day later that the DPS began to see how things really went down. They acknowledged that several bad actors had made errors that without a doubt led to more bloodshed. The director of the DPS, Steven C. McRe said, “With the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision.
It was the wrong decision. Period.” On June 1st, ABC News, citing many different sources, reported that the Yuvaldi police and the UCISD police had stopped cooperating with the investigation into their conduct. This was because the DPS had now publicly made the claim that the police had made an error by delaying entry into the classroom.
They said that the UCISD chief, Pedro Pete Aridondo, quote, provided an initial interview, but has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made 2 days ago. That same day, Ardodondo denied the accusations and told CNN that he was in contact with the DPS every single day. However, he said that he refused to say anymore because he didn’t want to talk about the case while the funerals were still ongoing.
He ended by saying, “Whenever this is done and the families quit grieving, then we’ll do that.” Obviously, many took this as callous in and of itself, given that he assumed the families would only grieve briefly and then return to their normal lives after the funerals. Anuo Reyes, the teacher in room 111, had lost every single one of his students in the shooting.
He himself had been shot in the arm, back, and lung. From his hospital bed, he criticized the police, calling them cowards. He said, “They sit there and did nothing for our community. They took a long time to go in. After everything, I get more angry because you cops have a bulletproof vest. I have nothing.
” He continued, “Nothing gets you ready for this. We trained our kids to sit under the table, but we set them up like ducks. You can give us all the training you want, but gun laws have to change. I will go anywhere to the end of the world to not let my students die in vain. I will go to the end of the world to make sure things get changed.
According to the DPS, before the border patrol arrived on scene, the 19 officers who were coming in and out of the school made, in their own words, no effort to get inside the classroom where Salvador was hiding. They said that this was because of the false statements that Arrodondo made that Salvador was isolated alone in a classroom where he could do no harm, i.e.
the barricaded suspect response. Angeli Gomez, the mom who was handcuffed by the police and later jumped the fence to rescue her kids, was interviewed by the media. She said that she was still on probation for charges she had received a decade before and that the police used this in order to threaten her into not telling her story.
They told her that if she did, they would press obstruction of justice charges that would violate her probation and send her to jail. Soon after, her car was stopped in a traffic stop where a police officer accused her of harboring illegal immigrants in her car. After she noticed a cop parked at her house for about 45 minutes, flashing its lights to let her know that it was present.
However, her story came to be doubted by some when the Uvaldi Leader News published an article saying that she was never handcuffed. Many believe that this however was a story pushed by the police to the publication in order to ruin her reputation even further. She hasn’t responded to the article herself. Further controversy came about when the story of Ruben Ruiz hit the public, the man who had wanted to enter into the school to save one of the teachers, his wife, and was taken out of the building by the other officers. He was so
disgusted himself that he resigned from his position in the police department. When the Yuvaldi Police Department’s acting chief, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, was interviewed after the shooting, he never mentioned knowing that any of the students were inside the classrooms despite getting the calls themselves.
Still, he actually took credit for wanting to enter into the classroom, saying that they removed Ruben Ruiz because, quote, “We were just afraid that he was going to try to run in the classroom and try to do what I wanted to do if I could have done it.” It came to be known that Chief Pete Aridondo had been elected to the Evaldi city council only a few weeks before the shooting took place.
The mayor, Dan Mclofflin, said that a special meeting where he would have been sworn in would no longer take place, saying that they were going to focus more on the families that lost loved ones instead. However, he lamented that in his words, “Nothing in the city charter, election code, or Texas constitution that prohibits Arrodondo from taking the oath of office, saying that there wasn’t an official investigation taking place into him.
He was later sworn in in secret without a ceremony, becoming a full-fledged city council member. A Texas state senator, Roland Gutierrez, said that he had heard from the Commission on State Emergency Communications that Arrodondo had no knowledge that any of the kids in the classrooms had called 911. This was, of course, a lie.
However, he didn’t take a hard stance, admitting that he didn’t know for sure at the time. He had even heard that Arrodondo didn’t have a radio on his person at all, which does seem to be true. However, other officers had been there relaying information from the dispatchers. It wasn’t long before the New York Times was able to find definitive proof that the police officers on scene were well aware of the children trapped inside the classrooms.
On June 2nd, a private meeting was held at the Uvaldi city hall where many of the higherups from around town were present. The meeting was arranged by the governor’s office and it was said to be in relation to rising tensions between Uvaldi officials. During this meeting, the most clear signs of a police cover up were displayed.
A one-page document very transparently titled the narrative was given to McRaw, the director of the DPS by the city attorney Paul Tarski. This was just as it sounds, the narrative surrounding the police response that those involved had written themselves. This was the narrative that they wanted to be given to the media.
The city officials then began to pressure Steve Mcra and the DPS to start using their story. It was clear that the document was very favorable toward the police, highlighting, in their words, the quick arrival of officers at the school and their success in containing the gunman. Some exerpts were, “Within 5 minutes of receiving a report of an accident at approximately 11:30 a.m.
on May 24th, patrol officers Mendoza and Sedo and their patrol sergeant, Daniel Coronado, were on scene taking fire. They immediately pursued the suspect as he ran to rob school.” This was the first lie as they didn’t take fire outside of the school. They also didn’t run into the school immediately after Salvador did. Another excerpt stated, “Officers Pete Aridondo, Donald Paige, Daniel Coronado, and Adrien Gonzalez followed the sound of gunfire and entered the west end of Rob’s school, while officers JB Martinez, and Eddie Canales entered into
the east end of Rob’s school, also following the sound of gunfire. There was zero hesitation on any of these officers’ part. They move directly towards the gunfire. The total number of persons saved by the heroes that our local law enforcement and the other assisting agencies is over 500 per UCISD. These were more lies as the officers weren’t able to tell where the gunfire was coming from, thus couldn’t move right towards it.
All of them also hesitated, grouping up in the hallway for quite a long time before even approaching the classrooms. Next, they immediately approached the door and were fired upon by the suspect with an AR rifle approximately four times with Eddie Canales taking shrapnel to his ear and Jav Martinez being grazed by a bullet to the head.
With both officers bleeding, they took cover a few yards down the hall to avoid fire and called for backup. Time was not wasted, but each minute was used to save the lives of children and teachers. Again, their approach to the door was far from immediate. Martinez was also stated to have been injured by material from the wall, not a bullet to the head.
Then we have US Marshals arrived with shields. No one else, not UPD, not UCISD, not Border Patrol, not DPS, not Homeland Security, and not any other agency had shields available. Bortac insisted that all the rooms be cleared, i.e. all the children and teachers be removed prior to use of the shields in breach of room 112.
There wasn’t any evidence that Border Patrol insisted that all of the rooms be cleared before they made their breach. They also had the shields, many of which weren’t even graded for a rifle, on scene long before the breach was made. And then, absent the shields, every UPD officer was of the opinion that breaching the door was suicide.
And every Texas Ranger or DPS agent who took their statements agreed. Not a single officer present, including DPS troopers and Texas Rangers, believed that they could save lives by approaching that door and being killed one by one. In reality, several officers had expressed interest in breaching the room as quickly as possible, with one of them being dragged out of the building for insisting on doing so.
There is also no evidence that they believe they couldn’t save any lives. Steven Mcra of the DPS was highly critical of the narrative document. He refused to endorse the document as it was presented to him, saying he disagreed with their summary of the events. District Attorney Bush B also objected, arguing that she was concerned about releasing such inaccurate and incomplete information.
On June 3rd, the board of the UCISD held a meeting to determine whether they would be taking any action against Pete Aridondo. They decided, not so surprisingly, not to take any disciplinary action against him. On June the 7th, Ardondo didn’t attend the city council meeting. When the mayor was asked why that was, he said that he couldn’t answer that question.
It was on June 9th that Arrodondo started to give his first interviews with the media and comment on the case. He said that the only reason he waited that long was to avoid blaming others or worsen the community’s grief. Pedro Pete Ardodondo said that he arrived at the school and thought that he was the first officer there.
He said that he abandoned his police radio somewhere because he thought it would slow him down, saying that he wanted his hands free to fight the gunman. When this was scrutinized, he said that the radio’s antenna would bump into him while he ran and might fall off of his belt. He further said that he knew that the radios didn’t usually work well in school buildings anyway.
He further lied, saying that he was completely unaware of the 911 calls being made from the classrooms because he didn’t have his radio despite being in the same hallway as the other officers talking about it. He said that he didn’t know that he was the incident commander, thinking he was a frontline responder. This again would be a lie because according to the National Incident Management System, the first person on scene is the incident commander.
if he really did think that he was the first officer on scene as he said, he would have known that that role would have gone to him. The DPS also described him as such, never implying that it was unclear to anyone else at the time. Orodondo said that he tried to open the door to classroom 111 while another UPD officer tried to open the door to 112, but both were locked.
This was either an outright lie or they didn’t try hard enough to open it. He then said that the door to 111 had a steel jam that prevented it from being opened. This was also later determined to be false. Orodondo then said that he didn’t know that Salvador was firing from inside the classroom or that some other officers had been grazed.
He would have had to be blind and deaf for this to be true. He was in the hallway himself for almost the entire time and all of the other officers continued to talk about being shot at throughout the entire incident. He said that he was provided at least 30 keys to the rooms, none of which worked. He said that he didn’t get a master key until a while later when another officer called him on his cell phone to tell him so.
This further damaged his credibility as while he didn’t have his radio, he did have his phone and was able to answer it when needed. Then he denied he was a coward and spit a line almost straight from the narrative document. He said the objective was to save as many lives as we could and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 400 of our Yuvaldi students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.
The same day that Orodondo gave that interview, a committee began to investigate the shooting on behalf of the Texas House of Representatives. They explained that the investigation would be done in private in order to preserve accuracy and be as thorough as possible before coming to a conclusion. It took several weeks before it was revealed that the police didn’t even try to open the door to the classroom for 77 minutes before the border patrol made their way in.
This was because a law enforcement source close to the investigation leaked that information to the media after seeing the surveillance video from inside the school himself. The media at first wondered if this was because they assumed the door was locked, but the leaker expressed that many officers were aware it likely wasn’t.
Still, he said that Pete Orodondo had tried various different keys out, but not on the doors to 111 or 112. Instead, he tried them on other doors while trying to determine which was a master key. The DPS director came to testify during the Texas Senate Committee meeting on the Yuvaldi school shooting that the police response was an quote abject failure and antithetical to everything we have learned over the past two decades.
Saying that objectively the police could have easily stopped the shooting within 3 minutes. He pointed the finger at Peter Ardondo saying that he was the onseen commander at the time. He said the only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the onseene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.
The Texas House investigative community came to release a 77page report detailing these systematic failures and the poor decision-making on part of the police, saying that they exacerbated the shooting. The committee heavily criticized state and federal officials as well. Things were made even worse when it was confirmed via the records of multiple complaints to the school that the lock to room 111 was indeed broken.
Meaning that the police’s claims of needing a master key or breaching tools before they could continue was entirely baseless. Either a ridiculous mistake that costed an hour or part of an intentional delay. Like with many other school shootings, some people immediately jumped to the conclusion that the shooting was either a SCOP or a false flag operation.
Many of them were convinced by the simple fact that Salvador had enough money to buy the two rifles and ammunition. While it was a good amount of money for an 18-year-old, saving up around $5,000 over a year of working three different part-time jobs, Waterburg, Wendy’s, and air conditioning, when you have no expenses at all isn’t much of an ask.
The minimum wage in Yuvali was $7.25. Even at working a low 20 hours a week, that would amount to 6,960 over the year. Assuming that Salvador did spend a little of his money here and there, saving a bit over $5,000 wouldn’t have been much of a stretch. Knowing that Wendy’s pays an average of $10 to $15 an hour in Texas, it would have been even easier.
The Donna Independent School District in Donna, Texas, about 240 mi from Yaldi, got a threat towards one of their own schools. Due to that, class was cancelled while the threat was investigated. The Department of Homeland Security got involved saying that this was due to both the false flag theories and the praise that Salvador was getting online.
They said, “Individuals in online forums that routinely promulgate domestic violent extremist and conspiracy theory related content have praised this shooting and encouraged copycat attacks.” Adding that other people aimed to spread disinformation and incite grievances, including claims it was a government-staged event meant to advance gun control measures.
The city of Yuvaldi began to try its best through their attorneys to prevent the release of police records related to the shooting. They said that the information was of no concern to the public, that there was embarrassing information related to criminal history, and that they may expose the police’s strategies related to preventing and predicting crime.
They also said that they could expose anyone involved to a risk of harm. The city also cited what is called the dead suspect loophole as well, where information is suppressed in a case that has no convictions, such as when a suspect is already dead. On June 22nd, the UCISD board decided to put Arrodondo on administrative leave for an unspecified amount of time.
Shortly after, on July 2nd, Ardondo decided to resign from his position on the city council entirely. It wasn’t long after that, the Uvaldi school board voted unanimously to terminate his contract as the police chief. The district attorney of Yubaldi County adamantly objected to releasing a portion of the security camera video taken in the hallway during the police response to the shooting.
While the clip was edited to end right before the police entered into the classroom, didn’t show any violence on screen and was edited to remove sounds of screaming, he still opposed it. The mayor, however, thought that the video needed to be shown to the public. On July 12th, that video was released. It was 77 minutes of video compiled from both the hallway footage and some of the police body cam overlaid on top when appropriate.
While the video was intended to be shown to the families of the victims first and then released to the public later, the opposite happened when the media ended up having a copy leaked and publishing it before that. This created a lot of anger among some of the family members, but others were actually happy about it being released to the public so that the community could see that they were being lied to about the police response.
When the video leaked, all hell broke loose. Outrage was everywhere as it showed that the police had not only lied about their swift response, their early attempts to enter the room, and more. It also showed how not seriously they were taking the situation. Some cops were seen fist bumping each other, others looking at their phones, and one of them was seen taking some hand sanitizer from a dispenser on the wall near the classrooms.
More than anything, it showed them mainly only standing around while Salvador executed children and tortured his victims just behind the unlocked door for 70 whole minutes. Salvador’s mom came to say that the months since the shooting were very difficult for her. She and her current boyfriend, Juan Alvarez, left town after the murders due to death threats.
After that, they were kind of on the run. They moved to Oklahoma for 8 months, but she was unable to find a job there. She got arrested within 1 month of the shooting for criminal trespass and driving without a license, only to be released shortly after. After that, she bounced around from job to job elsewhere.
During this, she was arrested yet again, this time for assaulting her boyfriend. After they decided to move back to Yuvaldi together and live at one of her mom’s properties free of charge, she said that nobody will hire her now and that they both lived off of Juan’s $900 disability checks and about $600 in food stamps that they got together.
She now sells random products out of her house to make a bit of money. She also admitted that she keeps Salvador’s room just as it was, almost treating it as a shrine to him. She’s been proud to show this to the media, even holding up her son’s clothes for the camera. However, Adriana got into trouble again when she actually got into a confrontation with one of the victim’s families, yelling at them in public. It was even caught on camera.
This was the family of Amiri Joe Garza. And when they spoke badly of her son, she yelled that they had no right to judge him. If anyone in the world had the right to pass judgment on him, it would have been them. She shouted, “You have no right to judge my son. No, you don’t. No, you don’t. May God forgive you all. All they wanted was answers.
As the family demanded to know why Salvador did what he did, they responded with, “What reasons? Because he was pissed off at you. Because you destroyed him? What reason did he have to kill 21 people?” Adriana replied that Salvador had mental health issues. She said, “I know my son was a coward.
You don’t think I don’t know that? I know. You don’t think I’m carrying all that with me? I know, and I’m sorry.” It finally came time for the first officer involved in the handling of the shooting to face consequences. This was a Texas state trooper named Crimson Elzando. She was investigated by the DPS for what they called actions inconsistent with training and department requirements.
As a result, she resigned from her job. However, shortly after, she actually got a job as a UCISD police officer. Crimson had been caught on body camera footage, admitting to the other officers that she wasn’t responding to the case in a hands-on way because more or less the kids in there weren’t hers and she didn’t care.
She mostly stood outside despite being one of the first officers on scene. She told them, “If my son had been in there, I would have not been outside. I promise you that.” When this audio leaked, she was fired from her job at UCISD as well. In October of 2022, another Texas state trooper, Sergeant Juan Maldonado, was fired from the DPS.
He had also been one of the first officers to arrive on scene within the first 5 minutes and failed to act in any meaningful way. More strange arrests would come to be made as well, one of which was the arrest of Nathan Cruz. This was Salvador’s 17-year-old cousin, who was arrested on August 8th, 2023, about a year later.
This was after he made a threat that was deemed to be terroristic in nature after he told his sister, “I’m planning on doing the same thing as my cousin.” Adding that he would shoot her in the head before he did it. To make matters worse, they lived within walking distance of an elementary school as well.
He was hit with a felony charge of making a terroristic threat to the public and another misdemeanor charge of making a terroristic threat against a family member. He was hit with a bond of $160,000 and remained in jail until the case was dismissed entirely due to a missing witness. Throughout 2023, an 18-year-old girl named Victoria Gabriella Rodriguez Morales continued to claim that she had been Salvador’s girlfriend before the massacre.
She said that they had actually planned it together, but he decided to carry it out without her. Given that there is nothing to back this up at all, her story isn’t believed. However, she was known to issue threats to schools herself starting all the way back in 2018. That year was when she was sent to a juvenile detention center in Texas.
But then she started sending more threats, saying that she would quote, “Kill public officials, shoot schools, and kill teachers and students.” One condition of her parole was that she would have to move back to Puerto Rico. However, she continued to harass schools in Yuvaldi, even there, especially after the shooting.
She threatened not only the school itself, but hospitals and even the survivors. She was found in Puerto Rico and arrested on 13 charges related to interstate threats. She’s looking at up to 60 years in prison now. She badmouththed the victims in the shooting, calling them all the little loser souls and saying that she hoped they were burning in hell.
Of all of the people arrested, one was fairly distant from the case geographically at least. You may remember Salvador’s online friend, the German girl who he told that he was going to shoot up the school. While she originally responded with cool, she deleted this message in hopes that no officials would find it. However, the message was stored internally on Facebook and screenshots had already been spread around and discussed on Yubo.
She actually got arrested and faced trial in Frankfurt on charges of failing to report planned crimes. She didn’t see jail time, instead being ordered to undergo what they called educational measures. Later, CNN reported on some of the audio and video related to the body cam of the UPD police chief, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas.
You’ll remember him as the man who got told about the 911 calls coming from inside the classroom and said okay before waving it away. It was found that he made a call to a dispatcher asking how many more were still alive in the room being told that 8 to nine likely were. It was found that he informed a border patrol of the information but neglected to mention it to the Texas Rangers.
Just 2 days before the city council was to determine whether or not to fire him, Parus retired from his job at the UPD. In January 2023, another Texas Ranger was fired. this time being Christopher Ryan Kindle. This was because he had failed to treat Salvador as an active shooter despite his specific training being that he should have known differently.
However, when he appealed this firing, he was placed back into his previous position. In September of 2023, the DPS announced their internal investigation had finished. No more Texas Rangers would now be punished. Some laws were changed as a result of this case. As a result of both this crime and Payton Gendin’s massacre in Buffalo, New York, the state of New York passed a new law that would raise the age requirement to buy a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21.
Texas also passed a law requiring law enforcement to partake in 16 hours of courses related to school shooting responses every 2 years. For the time being, it seemed that it was all over. The UCISD board announced plans to build a new elementary school to replace Rob Elementary. They began construction in 2023.
It would be placed near the Dalton Elementary School in order to form a new campus that would host classes from preschool to 4th grade. However, not all was over. While no more Texas Rangers would be punched by the DPS, the same didn’t apply to other officers on scene at the time. Many noticed that something seemed to be brewing behind the scenes when Pete Ardodondo lost his honorary discharge status at the end of 2023.
The Uvaldi County District Attorney, Christina Mitchell, convened a grand jury to find out whether or not any of their own officers should be criminally charged for their lack of response on the day of the shooting. Shortly after, in January 2024, the grand jury began hearing testimonies. Steve Mcra, the DPS director, was happy to testify before them.
Many other officers came to speak their piece as well. The Department of Justice had also finished their report detailing their own findings. When investigating the case, they criticized a large number of failures on the part of the Ualdi police. They noted the failure to recognize the case as an active shooting, the failure to secure the crime scene, the failure to follow standard operating procedures, and the failure to communicate appropriately with the families.
They even attack the personal character of the police, saying that they lack courage. Not only that, but the DOJ had confirmed that the victim’s families were indeed harassed by the police after the incident somewhat regularly in the hopes that they would leave town. This whole report was of major use to the grand jury. On June 27th, 2024, the grand jury indicted the first Yuvaldi police officer, that being none other than Pete Ardondo.
They then indicted another, Adrien Gonzalez. They were hit with multiple felony charges of child endangerment. Ardondo was hit with 10 while Gonzalez was hit with 29 charges. It’s unclear why the difference in their counts is so high, but it was mentioned that Gonzalez was a senior officer who had taken school shooting related training in the past.
So, he may have been seen as having more responsibility to act accordingly. Pete Ardondo was arrested and booked into the Yuvaldi jail that day, the same jail that he used to place criminals into himself. However, he was able to pay $100,000 in bonds and walk free for the time being. Adrien Gonzalez turned himself in a day later.
He himself was released after he posted a $10,000 bail. Both officers are looking at at least 2 years in prison and $10,000 in fines if they are convicted. Many feel that they deserve much more. On July 18th, 2024, it was time for Ardondo to make his plea. He predictably plead not guilty to all 10 of the charges against him.
Similarly, Gonzalez plead not guilty to all 29 of his own charges as well. With that, they will both face trial. As of now, their trial dates have been pushed back a few times. Only time will tell what kind of sentence they might serve. In autumn of 2025, the replacement for the Rob Elementary School called Legacy Elementary School opened for new students about 2 mi away from where Rob was located.
The ribbon cutting ceremony that opened the school was very emotional. Even though it was a new school, it was impossible to ignore the fact that it was replacing a school that was part of one of the biggest tragedies in American history. This was something that the staff didn’t ignore. The UCISD president, Laura Perez, said, “This school is not about forgetting.
It’s about remembering with dignity, rebuilding with courage, and choosing to believe in the future even when the past still hurts.” The new school includes a tribute to the 21 who died that day, along with a memorial tree to honor them. The Rob Elementary School, as of the making of this video, still hasn’t been torn down.
It remains in town, mostly dark with only a few outside lights to prevent intruders. It continues as a grim reminder of what happened that day, standing in the shadows. Salvador’s grandma, Sally, was eventually released from the hospital, finally recovering from the gunshot wound to her face. However, the bullet destroyed her teeth and a good portion of her jaw.
She will likely never be able to speak again. She needed multiple surgeries even after her discharge from the hospital. A GoFundMe page was created to pay for some of those medical bills. It asked for $100,000, but it fell flat at around $47,000. Still a surprising amount for the relative of a mass killer. Salvador’s sister has joined the military and by most accounts never speaks of her brother.
Salvador’s mom believes that he is now in heaven, feeling that God has forgiven him for what he did. She said that Salvador’s sister had a dream where he came to her and expressed that he was sorry, so it’s all good now. She is still known around the town for being a bit crazy. To paraphrase the much more descriptive comments given by the citizens of Uvaldi online, she boldly stated that she feels no need to apologize to the families of the victims.
She stated, “What will it accomplish? It’s not going to bring back the kids, and it won’t change their minds on what they think of me or my son.” As off-putting as her statements are, she is right about that. Nobody will ever think better of her son. When he went in the classroom, he said, “You’re all going to die.” And he just started shooting.
I was playing dead so he won’t shoot me. He shot my teacher and then he shot the kids. I think he was aiming at me like the thing and then he like I guess like one of the chairs were there so it blocked it and like p like pieces in my leg. I kind of don’t feel safe going to school and I feel hot and sometimes at night I have nightmares too.
Heat. Heat.
