Texas shooting: Gunman, bullied for lisp, wrote online about shootout minutes before attack

America disgraced itself with yet another mass shooting in a Texas school, where a teenager with state-legislated easy access to military grade guns massacred 19 children.
The 18-year old, named as Salvador Ramos, went on the rampage after shooting his grandmother (who survived). He was killed by a border patrol agent in a shootout. Media reports said the teenager, a student at the same Robb Elementary School in the mostly Latino town of Uvalde was upset over failing grades and being bullied because of a lisp and for dressing unconventionally.
His since-removed Instagram account featured photos of a young man with shoulder-length hair, his eyes closed. The account also included images of two assault rifles and a plastic gun magazine. Ramos’s cousin Mia told Washington Post that he was mocked for his speech impediment in middle school, and would tell his grandmother that he wanted to stop attending class. There were also reportedly problems between Ramos and his mother, which were bad enough that police were called, and he had a history of harming himself, once showing up at a park with self-inflicted cuts on his face. Friends told local media that he loved playing online shooter games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday that the gunman posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot up about 15 minutes before his rampage. The posts were the only advance warning of the rampage, Abbott said, adding that Ramos did not appear to have any criminal record or history of mental health problems. However, Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, disputed the account. “The messages Gov. Abbott described were private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred.”

While white supremacist trolls tried to portray the shooter as a hispanic foreigner and possibly an illegal immigrant, authorities said he was a US citizen who had moved from North Dakota to live with his grandmother in Texas. Although he is reported to have come from a poor background, Ramos apparently saved $5,000 by working at fast food restaurants to buy weapons.