The ex-girlfriend of Texas shooter Salvador Ramos reportedly told her friend how he would fly into terrifying violent rages, as one of his former coworkers has revealed how he harassed her online.
Keanna Baxter, 17, told the San Antonio Express-News that her former friend, who has chosen to remain anonymous, dated Ramos, 18, and that his violent mood swings would leave her terrified.
‘He dated my ex-friend. And then they broke up,’ Baxter said. ‘And then he tried to date me after that, but I told him no. Because he always had this kind of eerie sense about him.’
Crystal Foutz, (pictured) a former co-worker at Whataburger and Ramos’ classmate at Uvalde High School, also said he was aggressive online towards women
Keanna Baxter, 17, (pictured) said that her former friend dated Ramos and that his violent mood swings would leave her terrified
Former classmates have shed more light on the violent past of 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, (pictured) particularly towards women
She said she avoided Ramos because her friend warned him of his temperament.
‘She told me that he was scary,’ Baxter said. ‘Like he would get super violent. And when he would lose his temper, she would literally be scared for her life, basically.
‘He would send her these really nasty messages, where he’d go from super sweet to screaming at her back to super sweet.’
‘He was overall just aggressive, like violent,’ Baxter added. ‘He would try and fight women. He would try and fight anyone who told him no — if he didn’t get his way, he’d go crazy. He was especially violent towards women.’
On Tuesday Ramos slaughtered at least 19 innocent children in the second deadliest school shooting in American history in Uvalde, Texas before being shot dead in a shootout with a border patrol officer.
Police say Ramos said bought two AR-15 assault rifles for his 18th birthday days before the shooting, bragged about them on social media and suggested he would commit an atrocity before the deadly attack.
Crystal Foutz, a former co-worker at Whataburger and Ramos’ classmate at Uvalde High School, also said he was aggressive online towards women.
She told the Express-News that he made violent threats against her via Instagram comments after an online spat with her ex-boyfriend.
‘It was just harassing. And I never like provoked him or anything like that,’ Foutz said. ‘He was aggressive for no reason. … I just blocked him.’
Ramos harassment of women online was apparently a pattern.
‘She told me that he was scary,’ Baxter said. ‘Like he would get super violent. And when he would lose his temper, she would literally be scared for her life’
Ramos killed 19 kids and two adults at an elementary Robb Elementary School on Tuesday
His social media was filled with new rifles, which he purchased on his 18th birthday
Mourners on Thursday place flowers on crosses with the names of children killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas
Children run to safety after escaping from a window during Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School where a Ramos killed nineteen children and two teachers
‘Another friend of mine, when she worked with (Ramos), there was an incident between a girlfriend and a boyfriend — (Ramos) tried to fight the girlfriend,’ Foutz said. ‘And it really was over nothing. Just because he was aggressive like that.’
‘He was just very like pushy,’ Foutz recalled. ‘If you would ask for something or if he was trying to pick on you or he was trying to tell you something and you didn’t give him a reaction, it would make him angry … (He was) very pushy, very aggressive.’
Both Baxter and Fouz called Ramos a ‘loner’ with ‘no friends,’ mirroring what his mother’s boyfriend Manuel Alvarez told DailyMail.com.
‘The people that did try and give him a chance to be friends with, he scared them away,’ Foutz said. ‘He was a bully, really. If you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was a bully to you.’
‘He didn’t have any friends,’ Baxter added. ‘To be honest, no one ever spoke to him. Just because people were genuinely afraid of him.’
Baxter said Ramos was so outwardly violent many people just assumed he would commit a mass shooting at their high school.
‘We all thought maybe they’re going to do it to the high school — because we’ve gotten threats before,’ she said. ‘But not to the kids. It should have been us. There was no reason to go and hurt those kids.
‘None of us are like that. None of us have that kind of hate in our heart to do something like that or know how this ever could have happened.’
But by all accounts, Ramos had been a relatively normal child until the eighth grade, with his ‘best friend’ from that period, Stephen Garcia, branding him the ‘nicest’ and ‘shyest kid’ who ‘just needed to break out of his shell.’
Reportedly Ramos was bullied for a stutter and lisp. Classmates also allegedly called him with gay slurs. At one point, he uploaded a picture of himself wearing eyeliner.
‘He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,’ Garcia told the Post, ‘Over social media, over gaming, over everything.’
When Garcia had to move away, Ramos began to change, dressing in all black and donning large military boots.
In his early childhood, friends claim, he had been nicknamed ‘pelon’, meaning bald in Spanish, for his incredibly short hair. But in an apparent bid to leave those days behind, he began to grow it long.
He was then branded an ’emo’ or ‘alternative’ at school, where he got into multiple fist fights before increasingly playing truant.
During the last few months of his life, Ramos was working at a Wendy’s and was hardly in attendance at school. He was not set to graduate this year, a fact he seemed to despise.
As he morphed into a ‘different person’ into his later teen years, one local claimed he would ride around at night with a friend firing a BB gun at random passersby. He is also said to have egged people’s cars.
He is said to have found it hard to hold onto friendships, often ‘taking things too far’ with ‘weird’ comments.
One friend, who wanted to join the Marines, said he cut off Ramos after the killer told him that he only wanted to join the force ‘so he could kill people.’
Ramos’ Wendy’s co-workers told the Daily Beast that he had an ‘aggressive streak’ and would send inappropriate messages to female employees. They also branded him ‘quiet’ and ‘anti-social’.
One said: ‘He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking, ‘Do you know who I am?’
And he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies.’
The same source claimed there were multiple videos of Ramos fighting people with boxing gloves at a local park.
‘He’d take them around with him,’ they claimed.
Ramos’s social media was full of photos of his new guns, which he bought on his 18th birthday, state senator Roland Gutierrez said.
Ramos also messaged a Los Angeles-based woman on May 12 on Instagram, tagging her in a photo of the guns.
‘You gonna repost my gun pics,’ @sal8dor_ direct messaged her.
What your guns gotta do with me,’ [sic] she replied on Friday.
‘Just wanted to tag you,’ he said back.
Then at 5:43am on Tuesday, @salv8dor_ messaged her and said: ‘I’m about to’.
The girl asked ‘about to what’ to which he answered: ‘I’ll tell you before 11.’
He said he would text her in an hour and urged her to respond.
‘I got a lil secret I wanna tell u,’ he messaged with a smiley face emoji covering its mouth.
‘Be grateful I tagged you,’ he wrote.
She replied: ‘No it’s just scary,’ adding: ‘I barely know you and you tag me in a picture with some guns?’
His last message at 9:16am on Tuesday was ‘Ima air out’.
The shooting started around 11:32am. The woman reacted with horror when she learnt what he had done.
‘He was just very like pushy,’ Foutz said. ‘If you would ask for something or if he was trying to pick on you or he was trying to tell you something and you didn’t give him a reaction, it would make him angry … (He was) very pushy, very aggressive’
‘He’s a stranger I know nothing about him he decided to tag me in his gun post,’ she wrote.
‘I’m so sorry for the victims and their families I really don’t know what to say.’
She then added: ‘The only reason I responded to him was because I was afraid of him I wish I stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime. I didn’t know.’
When an Instagram user asked if she was his girlfriend, she replied: ‘I don’t know him and I don’t even live in Texas.’