The mother of the gunman who fatally shot 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday asked for forgiveness in an interview with a Spanish-language news outlet.
“Forgive me,” Adriana Martinez, the mother of Salvador Ramos, told CNN affiliate Televisa in an interview posted Friday, The New York Times reported.
“Forgive my son,” she continued.
Ramos opened fire on a fourth-grade classroom and barricaded himself inside, spending more than an hour inside Robb Elementary before Border Patrol tactical officers breached the room and killed him.
“I have no words,” Martinez told Televisa the day after the massacre.
“I don’t know what he was thinking. He had his reasons for doing what he did. And please don’t judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me,” she added.
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Investigators have determined that Ramos, 18, shot his grandmother, Martinez’s mother, in the face and left her wounded in her home before opening fire on the school. The grandmother, Celia Martinez Gonzales, is hospitalized and recovering, the Times reported.
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