Tony Gonzales, a House Republican from Texas and whose district includes Uvalde, told Fox News this morning that the psychopath gunman who massacred 21 at Robb Elementary was arrested four years before for threatening to commit a mass shooting at his school.
Via Mediaite:
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) claimed on Friday that the gunman behind Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was arrested four years ago for threatening to shoot up a school.
Salvador Ramos, 18, shot and killed 19 children and two adults before being killed by police. It was the third-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting and 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
Gonzales, whose congressional district includes Uvalde, told Fox News that he found out on Thursday night that “the shooter was arrested years ago, four years ago, for having this plan for basically saying, for saying, you know, when I’m a senior in 2022, I am going to shoot up a school.”
But it turns out that rumor may not be true. Fox News host John Roberts took to twitter a couple of hours ago to suggest it may not be true…
Holding on this report from @RepTonyGonzales . New information that there was an arrest of two Uvalde students in 2018, but it may not have been the shooter…
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 27, 2022
Since then intrepid Fox News reporter Bill Melugin tweeted that Texas officials are telling him that’s incorrect, that Ramos was not involved in that incident:
Texas DPS & Texas Rangers tell me this is incorrect. There were two juveniles arrested on conspiracy charges for a shooting plot several years back, but the Uvalde shooter was not involved in that incident and was not arrested. @FoxNews https://t.co/TX5tvKTUt7
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 27, 2022
I believe I saw something similar to this on the day of the shooting. But the report I saw didn’t name any individuals and there was no way for me to confirm one of them was Ramos, so I chose not to run with it. Now I’m glad I did.
I checked the timeline of Gonzales, and to his credit he did suggest an hour ago that he might be wrong:
It is now unclear if the shooter was one of the two kids detained.
If this was not the shooter, we need to find out who these kids are, where they are now, and if they were classmates of the shooter.
There is a clear need for mental health resources in our community.
— Rep. Tony Gonzales (@RepTonyGonzales) May 27, 2022