Deranged Texas killer Salvador Ramos had been trying to buy a gun for at least eight months — and openly chatted about his reputation as a likely school shooter in social media messages posted in the months before Tuesday’s attack, officials announced Friday.
“Ramos asked his sister to help him buy a gun” as far back as Sept. 21, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw announced Friday as he detailed the killer’s online activity.
“She flatly refused,” he said of the sibling, who is reportedly serving in the Navy. McCraw did not say what digital method they used to communicate.
Then Ramos — who legally bought the rifle he used after turning 18 last week — had numerous group chats on Instagram in which they openly “discussed Ramos being a school shooter,” McCraw announced.
That started in Feb. 28 — nearly three months before he slaughtered 19 kids and two teachers Tuesday at Robb Elementary in the second deadliest school shooting in US history.
The next day, March 1, a member of an Instagram chat he had with four others “discussed him buying a gun,” the police official revealed.
“Word on the street is you’re buying a gun,” someone asked him in a four-person chat two days after that, on March 3, McCraw revealed.
“Ramos replied, ‘Just bought something [right now],’” the official said, reading from the chats.
The latest from the Texas school shooting
Ominously, on March 14, Ramos posted to Instagram “10 more days” — suggesting he may have been planning something two months earlier.
“A user replied, ‘Are you gonna shoot up school or something?’” McCraw revealed.
Ramos “replied ‘No’ — and ‘stop asking dumb questions and you’ll see,” he said.
It was not immediately clear if all the chats involved the same people, or if there were different groups of friends.
Despite his bragging, Ramos bought the rifle he used as well as another found in his crashed car last week after he turned 18.
