Texas killer told children: ‘It’s time to die’– moments before shooting them
- A boy who survived told TV reporter what the gunman said – his parents did not want him identified or on camera, but he wanted to share what happened
- The boy also said a police officer shouted ‘Yell if you need help!’ and when one child did that, the gunman overheard and shot her
A student who survived Tuesday’s mass shooting atRobb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, says the gunman told the children “It’s time to die”.
The boy said he was in a room that shared a door with the classroom where the gunman first barricaded himself in during the shooting. It was at that point he “started shooting children and teachers that were inside”, according to a report by CBS News.
“He came in and he crouched a little bit and he said, ‘It’s time to die,’” the boy told a television reporter. His parents did not want him identified or on camera, but the boy wanted to share what happened.
“I was hiding hard,” said the fourth-grade student in a heartbreaking account of the gunman’s classroom assault. “The police officer said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy told news channel Kens5.
The gunman who killed the 19 children and two teachers was able to enter the school without any confrontation, authorities said on Thursday, contradicting earlier reports that a police officer engaged him outside the building.
Salvador Ramos, 18, crashed his pickup truck outside the school at 11.28am on Tuesday, fired several shots at two bystanders across the street and walked into an unlocked door of the school at 11.40am, Victor Escalon, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a news conference.
Escalon said officers arrived and entered the school four minutes later but took cover after Ramos fired multiple rounds at them.
He barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom, where he shot his victims, mostly nine- and 10-year-olds, in the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade.
There were warning signs for anyone to stumble upon, days before the 18-year-old gunman entered a Texas elementary school and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers.
There was the Instagram photo of a hand holding a gun magazine, a TikTok profile that warned, “Kids be scared,” and the image of two AR-style semi-automatic rifles displayed on a rug, pinned to the top of the killer’s Instagram profile.
Shooters are leaving digital trails that hint at what’s to come long before they actually pull the trigger.
“When somebody starts posting pictures of guns they started purchasing, they’re announcing to the world that they’re changing who they are,” said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent who spearheaded the agency’s active shooter programme. “It absolutely is a cry for help. It’s a tease: can you catch me?”
The detailed account came hours after videos emerged showing desperate parents outside Robb Elementary School during the attack, imploring officers maintaining a perimeter to storm the building, with some fathers having to be restrained.
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“That’s a tough question,” Escalon said when asked if officers should have gone in sooner, adding that authorities would offer more information as the investigation proceeds.
In one video posted on Facebook by a man named Angel Ledezma, parents can be seen breaking through yellow police tape and yelling at officers to go into the building.
“It’s already been an hour, and they still can’t get all the kids out,” Ledezma said in the video. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another video posted on YouTube showed officers restraining at least one adult. One woman can be heard saying, “Why let the children die? There’s shooting in there.”
“We got guys going in to get kids,” one officer is heard telling the crowd. “They’re working.”
The massacre has reignited a national debate over the country’s gun laws. President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have vowed to push for new restrictions, despite resistance from Republicans.
There was no armed police officer stationed at the school. Escalon told reporters that most shots were fired at the outset of the attack, based on preliminary information.
He described a chaotic scene after the initial exchange of gunfire, with officers calling for backup and evacuating students and staff.
Investigators are still working to determine a motive, he said. Ramos, a high school dropout, had no criminal record and no history of mental illness. Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday that Ramos had written an online message to someone minutes beforehand saying he was about to “shoot up an elementary school”.
