Uvalde school records show teenage gunman's spiral before 2022 shooting
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The teenage gunman in the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre entered school in Uvalde, Texas, as a bright learner before years of escalating academic and behavioral troubles that preceded him opening fire on a fourth-grade classroom, according to records released Monday.
The school files reveal in greater detail 18-year-old Salvador Ramos’ downward spiral that authorities have well documented since the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers. One assessment shows Ramos described as a “motivated thinker and learner” in kindergarten, but by middle school, he was suspended or written up multiple times for harassment, bullying and failing to meet the minimum statewide testing standards.
In October 2021 — seven months before the shooting — Ramos withdrew from high school because of “poor academic performance, lack of attendance" and records showed he had failing grades in nearly all classes.
The records are among thousands of pages released by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District following a yearslong legal battle to withhold documents connected to one of the deadliest classroom attacks in U.S. history.
Many of the documents offer scant new revelations surrounding the attack and the gunman, whose troubled history has been laid out in previous state and federal investigations. Nor do the records — which do not include any video from the day of the shooting — shed light on the hesitant and widely criticized police response.
The documents include the personnel file of former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo, one of two officers facing criminal charges over the slow law enforcement response, and emails to and from school administrators in the days and weeks after the attack.
At 11:40 a.m. on the day of the shooting, Arredondo received a text from a school district secretary noting that another employee reported hearing gunfire outside the school.
“They went ahead and locked themselves down,” the text to Arredondo read.
Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales, another former Uvalde school district officer, are the only responding officers who face criminal charges for their actions that day. They both have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of child endangerment and abandonment and are scheduled for trial later this year.
Media organizations, including The Associated Press, sued the district and county in 2022 for the release of their records related to the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers. A Texas appeals court in July upheld a lower court’s ruling that the records must be released.
The records are not the public’s first glimpse inside one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings and the slow law enforcement response that has been widely condemned. Last year, city officials in Uvalde released police body cam videos and recordings of 911 calls.
Shooter's records
Salvador Ramos' academic records showed a student who as a kindergartener was described as “a remarkable little boy” who was a “very hard worker,” but he went on to be suspended multiple times in junior high and withdrew from high school because of “poor academic performance.”
The records showed a student spiraling further into academic and behavioral problems, cut classes and confrontations with teachers through middle school. By ninth grade, he was classified as “at risk.”
The records align with previous findings released by investigators, including a 2022 Texas House report that laid out how the gunman “turned down a dark path” after dropping out of school and became increasingly isolated in the year prior to the shooting.
Uvalde school police chief
Arredondo has been the target of much of the blame for the law enforcement response that saw nearly 400 local, state and federal officers wait more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom filled with dead and wounded children and teachers as parents outside begged them to go in.
The Arredondo emails after the shooting show a chief still being asked questions about security at district events, concerns about someone who liked Ramos' social media posts and a note from a district administrator 12 days after the attack that asked: “How are you today?"
The Uvalde district placed Arredondo on paid leave on June 22 in a letter that told him he was not to enter any district building, go on any campus or attend any school activity. The letter also directed Arredondo to cooperate with any investigation and not to discuss the investigation with district employees.
Post-shooting messaging and anguish
Text messages between a group of Uvalde school staffers show in the days after the shooting, officials briefly noted criticisms of the response but avoided responding via text message. One exchange noted a law enforcement timeline that included a 77-minute delay. Another referenced a news article where a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson was pressed on the delayed response.
“We might be witnessing a huge battle within the DPS,” wrote Kenneth Mueller, the district's director of student services. Hal Harrell, the superintendent, responds with a text to call him to “plan this out.”
On June 12, a fourth-grade teacher who was inside the school during the shooting told Harrell in an email that surviving staff members were being ignored by the district.
“I got to hear about the future of the school I love through a press conference,” Lynn Deming wrote. She described taking students inside from recess when they heard gunshots and then bullets “came through my windows.”
Deming said she tried to lay in front of her students so that she could block them from the gunfire.
“I had shrapnel in my back from when he had shot in my window, I had blood all over the back of me, but I tried to stay calm for my students,” she wrote. “I needed my students to hear that they were loved in case it was the last thing they ever heard.”
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Juan Lozano in Houston; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington; and Jesse Bedayn in Denver contributed.