Mother of Uvalde Gunman Arrested Over Threats to Kill a Man

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/uvalde-mother-arrested-oklahoma.html

The police said Adriana Martinez Reyes, who told them the teenager behind
the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was her son, threatened to harm a
man during an altercation.

The Oklahoma City police arrested on Wednesday the mother of the teenager
responsible for the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde,
Texas, and charged her with threatening a man.

The woman, Adriana Martinez Reyes, was taken into custody after she
threatened to kill the man with whom she had been living, according to a
police report. Ms. Reyes, 40, volunteered during her arrest that she was
the mother of “the one that killed all of the children in the Uvalde Texas
shooting,” according to court records.

Little has been known about the family of Salvador Ramos, who the
authorities said shot his grandmother in the face on May 24 and then
stormed a pair of connected classrooms at Robb Elementary School in
Uvalde, killing 19 children and two teachers. His grandmother survived the
attack and has since returned home to Uvalde, a small, predominantly
Mexican American community about 80 miles south of San Antonio.

The family of Mr. Ramos has not responded to repeated requests for comment
since the mass shooting.

Investigations into the shooting have been marred by controversies over
the authorities’ lack of transparency and failure to explain why it took
nearly 400 responding officers more than 73 minutes to confront and kill
Mr. Ramos in the school.

In the months since the tragedy, the families of the victims have
organized marches and packed city and state government meetings to demand
accountability, rarely focusing on the gunman himself.

Nearly a month after the shooting, relatives of one victim confronted Ms.
Reyes during a chance encounter in the streets of Uvalde, and she was
captured on camera saying she knew her son was “a coward.”

The family of the gunman managed largely to avoid attracting attention
until reports of Ms. Reyes’s arrest surfaced in local news reports.

The police in Oklahoma City said that on Wednesday morning, officers
responded to the second call of the day regarding a home there, to
investigate reports of a domestic disturbance. When the officers arrived,
according to court records, a man told them that Ms. Reyes had been living
with him but that they had had a falling out. The man, identified in court
documents as VI Alvarez, told the police that he was disabled and that,
even though he was in love with Ms. Reyes, he had grown fearful of her.

It is unclear what led to the confrontation between Mr. Alvarez and Ms.
Reyes Wednesday morning. At some point, Ms. Reyes threatened to kill Mr.
Alvarez, according to court records.

“He is scared of what AR might do to him when no one is around or when he
is sleeping,” an officer wrote in a police report, referring to Ms. Reyes
by her initials. “He does not feel safe when AR is there and wont feel
safe until she is arrested and cant harm him.”

Ms. Reyes, who is being held on a $1,000 bond, faces a state charge of
threatening to perform an act of violence and a city charge of assault and
battery, according to the authorities. She did not have a lawyer listed in
her legal paperwork.

Ms. Reyes denied to a responding officer that she had threatened the man,
according to a police report.

The motives behind the school shooting that changed Uvalde forever remain
a mystery. Mr. Ramos was described by local residents as a loner who
rarely was seen around town. He was a high school senior who frequently
missed classes and struggled to get along with others, according to people
who knew him.

He seemed to find common ground with other teenagers who, like him,
enjoyed playing violent video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty. Some
classmates recalled that he was often picked on, mocked for the clothes he
wore or teased about his mother and sister.

One former classmate recalled that the gunman had a troubled relationship
with his mother. On more than one occasion, the classmate said, Mr. Ramos
could be heard through a microphone arguing with her as he played video
games. The classmate said Mr. Ramos spent more time at his grandmother’s
house than at his mother’s home.

In the days before the shooting, there were indications that Mr. Ramos was
planning a large attack. Chatting with other teenagers online, Mr. Ramos
confided in them that he had purchased an AR-15-style rifle shortly after
he turned 18 and planned to use it. On the morning of the shooting, he
spoke to a teenager overseas and showed her the all-black outfit he was
wearing.

Moments later, he told an online acquaintance that he had just shot his
grandmother and was about to “shoot up a elementary school.”

It was unclear whether Ms. Reyes had since moved permanently to Oklahoma
City from Uvalde.

During the street encounter in Uvalde in early July, a camera crew for the
Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo captured a tense moment.

In the video, relatives of Amerie Jo Garza, one of the 19 children killed
at the school, can be seen chasing Ms. Reyes on the street and pleading
for answers, asking, “What reason did he have?”

At one point, Ms. Reyes can be seen calling 911, asking for help, and
telling the girl’s relatives: “I know my son was a coward, you don’t think
I don’t know that? I know. You don’t think I’m carrying all that with me?
I know. And I’m sorry.”

Many Uvalde residents have said they did not see Ms. Reyes in Uvalde after
that.