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.
