The Texas gunman who murdered 19 children and two teachers posted on social media that he was going to shoot up an elementary school about 15 minutes before his rampage.
Governor Greg Abbott revealed this said on Wednesday, as an update on the harrowing details about the attack continued to emerge.
The gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, also wrote a message saying he was going to shoot his grandmother and another one confirming he had done so, Abbott said at a news conference.
His grandmother, whom Ramos shot in the face shortly before attacking the school, survived and called police.
Ramos fled the home he shared with his grandmother and crashed his car near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
He entered the school through a back door carrying an AR-15 assault-style rifle and wearing tactical gear.
He barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom, authorities said, and killed students and teachers before he was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer, Abbott said.
An additional 17 people suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The online messages were the only advance warning, Abbott said, adding that Ramos, a high school dropout, did not appear to have any criminal record or history of mental health problems.
Abbott said the posts were made on Facebook, but spokespeople for Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms (FB.O), said they were private messages discovered after the shooting.
The company declined to say who received the messages or which of Meta’s platforms, such as Messenger or Instagram, was used to send them.
Ramos purchased two rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition in March, according to authorities.
The attack, which came 10 days after an avowed white supremacist shot 13 people at a supermarket in a mostly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, has reignited a national debate over U.S. gun laws.
In a sign of the charged political atmosphere, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate challenging Abbott in a November election, interrupted the news conference to confront Abbott for loosening, rather than restricting, the state’s gun laws.
Several officials yelled at O’Rourke, with one calling him a “sick son of a bitch” for allegedly politicizing the shooting, though it was not clear who.
O’Rourke was escorted out of the building and spoke to reporters outside, calling it “insane” that an 18-year-old was legally permitted to acquire an AR-15 and vowing to pursue gun limits.
“We can get that done if we had a governor that cared more about the people of Texas than he does this own political career or his fealty to the NRA,” he said, referring to the National Rifle Association, a gun-rights advocacy organization.
Texas has some of the country’s most permissive firearm laws.
In a prime-time address on Tuesday evening, President Joe Biden called for new gun safety restrictions.
“As a nation, we have to ask when in God’s name we’re going to stand up to the gun lobby,” he said, his voice rising. read more
But new legislation appeared unlikely to pass in Washington. Virtually all Republicans in Congress oppose new gun restrictions, citing the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a right to bear arms, and there was no sign the massacre would alter that position.
White House officials were planning a trip to Texas for Biden, a senior administration official said.
World leaders expressed shock and sympathy. Pope Francis on Wednesday said he was “heartbroken” and called for an end to “the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons.”
The Texas rampage stands as the deadliest U.S. school shooting since a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012.
