The mother of the gunman that killed 21 people in Tuesday's Texas school shooting has begged victims for forgiveness, saying "please don't judge him".
On May 24, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary school in Uvalde armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun. Once on the campus, the teenager entered a classroom and opened fire.
Nineteen children between the ages of nine and 11 and two teachers were killed in the devastating attack.
Now, the teenage gunman's mom, Adriana Martinez Reyes, has spoken about her son's actions in an interview with CNN affiliate Televisa.
Watch her interview below:"[Translated] I have no words to say. 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," a distraught Reyes said when questioned by a reporter from the inside of a vehicle.
She also begged the families of victims for forgiveness: "Forgive me, forgive my son, I know he had his reasons."
The reporter then asked the mother what those reasons were and she answered: "To get closer to those children instead of paying attention to all the bad things... I have no words, I don't know."
Asked to describe her son, she said: "He was very quiet, he was himself, he didn't bother anybody, he didn't do anything to anybody."
Per The Independent, the teen's father, also named Salvador Ramos, also expressed remorse for his son’s actions on Thursday.
"I just want the people to know I’m sorry, man, [for] what my son did," the 42-year-old father told Daily Beast. "He should’ve just killed me, you know, instead of doing something like that to someone."
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Ramos messaged someone that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had shot her.
CNN later interviewed this person - a 15-year-old girl in Germnay.
Then in the last message, sent around 15 minutes before he reached the elementary school, he said he was going to shoot up a school, Mr. Abbott added.
The gunman barricaded himself in a classroom until law enforcement officers eventually broke in and fatally shot him.
The massacre is deemed as America's deadliest school shooting in a decade, after 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, back in 2012.
