In Uvalde (Texas), relatives of a victim of the deadly shooting confronted the mother of the perpetrator. “I know my son was a coward, but you have no right to judge him,” Adriana Martinez said. On May 24, Salvador Ramos (18) shot and killed 19 children and two teachers in a school.
The spirited discussion was filmed by a Telemundo crew. The news station was following Martinez and was thus an accidental witness to the incident.
Their paths crossed after the mother attended a gathering of students. Suddenly an SUV pulled up beside her on the side of the road. The occupants turned out to be relatives of Amerie Jo Garza, one of the young victims of the shooting.
“Was he mad at you?”
They wanted to know why Ramos’s fuses were blown. “Was he mad at you? Have you driven him this far? Why on earth did he feel the need to kill 21 people?”
Garza’s grandmother also turned to the camera. “She will not go free. She raised him that way. She knew what he was like. She knew he had guns. She’s not innocent,” said Dana Mendiola.
“My son was a coward”
The relatives also wanted to know why the mother herself had not sounded the alarm in advance. “I didn’t know,” she replies in a broken voice. “I know my son was a coward. Do you think I don’t realize that? Do you think I don’t carry this burden with me? Sorry!”
Martinez felt so threatened by the situation that she called the police. Officers quickly arrived and separated the arguing parties. “God bless them,” the mother said in Spanish just before getting into the police car.
Ramos had been living with his grandparents for two to three months before the fatal shooting. He was known for being a loner who barely attended school. There is also footage of him holding a bag of dead cats.
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