Jamie Arellano, classmate of Salvador Ramos, says: ‘We saw him hit a little dog’

An 18-year-old who shot up a school, killing 19 children and 2 teachers, had a long history of anger and aggression that somehow went unnoticed for far too long. Those who knew Salvador Ramos say he was plagued by violent tendencies and carried evil with him wherever he went.

“Let me tell you about Salvador,” says Jamie Arellano, who attended Uvalde High School with Ramos. “He would go to the park and try to pick on people, and he loved hurting animals.”

The pattern of violence goes back as far as almost anyone can remember.

Arellano says Ramos wasn’t bullied at all – the truth was Ramos himself was the bully.

“He would try to swear at people and start fights,” Arellano said. “I remember once we saw him senselessly beat a small dog.”

Jordan Vonderhaar

Students and parents had previously raised concerns about the Sagittarian’s behavioral issues, but very little was done.

“Sure, we have some therapists on site, but they’re not really qualified to deal with something like this guy,” said Ariel Silva, whose child goes to school here in Uvalde. “This school never has enough money to really do everything it needs to do. This is not a prosperous community.”

Silva says she feels the school could have done more to stop this massacre before it started, but also feels they lacked the resources and knowledge to do much about it.

“I’m sure they’re doing what they can,” she says. “But we just don’t get the funding that other schools seem to get.”

You might be wondering why? Schools in Texas are like most places and live on money raised from tax revenues and government subsidies. These government subsidies are often mired in bureaucratic red tape and often die long before they reach the grassroots.

“The state ties our hands,” says local resident Lydia Martinez. “They just look at us like ‘those poor Hispanics’ who live near the border.”

That mindset seems to be part of the problem.

The residents here have to fight for everything they get. She said no matter how hard they try to get their fair share of the pie, Republican lawmakers care about their big-city constituents and don’t care about the challenges facing these rural Texans.

“If we had resources and representation, maybe we could have avoided that,” Martinez says.

A person found to have violent tendencies and behavior problems would likely have received proper treatment in a larger, wealthier school district that had at least a few more resources, community members say.

“They had their chance to do something about it and they didn’t do it,” says Uvalde’s mother Marcos Villegas. “They (state GOP leaders) come here pretending to care, but they really don’t care. It’s like we don’t exist because we don’t contribute to their campaigns.”

Uvalde is in the middle of “Trump Country”, where there have been deep political rifts of late.

Villegas says he feels more could be done to stop this at all levels of government. Deep down, he realizes that none of this will bring back the lives lost. But it still hurts and the pain is deep.

“I hate to say it, but if you voted for these people, you played a part in all of that pain,” he says.