Uvalde gunman regularly threatened teenage girls online prior to the massacre

The young women said that many of Ramos’ threats to assault women were barely visible from the undercurrent sexism pervading the Internet. They claimed they have fought back, but also accepted.

A 2021 Pew Research Center study showed that these experiences are quite common among young people.

About two-thirds reported having experienced online harassment as adults under the age of 30. 33% of women aged 35 and under report being sexually harassed online.
 
Professor of law at the University of Virginia Danielle K. Citron said that women and girls often do not report threats of being raped to law enforcement or trusted adults because they feel unsafe and private online. Sometimes they don’t believe anyone would help.

Citron said that women and girls have “internalized” the idea of “What else can we expect?” “The Fight for Privacy,” which will be published in April. “Our safety is something society doesn’t value.”

The Post conducted interviews and viewed Ramos’ messages. His hatred of women and obsession with violence was evident, but his identity was not revealed. The Post spoke to teens who said they had seen Ramos on Yubo’s live videos. They then exchanged Instagram usernames to send messages with him.

He had also restricted his comments to private messaging platforms like Yubo or Instagram, so that only the recipients could respond.

Ramos, like many others he spoke to online, had not shared much about himself. Ramos used screen names such as “salv8dor_”, and “TheBiggestOpp”, and only shared his first name, age, and last name. His profile photos were all selfies. He was holding up his shirt, or looking depressed in front of a mirror.

He posted animal videos, had flirtatious conversations, and shared intimate details about his past with others that made them feel like old friends. In recent months, he started to post darker images — dark black-and-white photos of his bed and pictures of rifles.

His threats were vague and unspecific, so they could easily be dismissed as a joke or trolls. According to one girl, Ramos was first seen in a Yubo panel and told someone “Shut up before you shoot me.” But she thought it was harmless since “kids laugh around like that.”

Ramos started to hint at something happening on Tuesday in the week prior to the shooting. She said that it was at least three girls. “I’ll tell ya before 11 She said that he had told them the secret several times. He sent her a picture of two rifles on the morning of shooting. According to The Post’s screenshot, she asked him why he sent them. However, he didn’t reply.

She said, “He would threaten everybody.” She said that he talked about shooting up schools, but that no one believed him. No one thought he would do it.

Another 16-year old claimed that she met Ramos in Yubo in February, and that he asked her for her Instagram account. He reacted to a meme she had posted about a weapon using a laughing emoji. He said that he wouldn’t use an AK-47 but that he would rather have “a better gun”: An AR-15-style rifle similar to the one police claim he used in the shooting. The Post viewed a screenshot of the conversation.