Customs and Border Patrol shares photo of bullet-damaged hat worn by agent during Texas shootout

Customs and Border Patrol have shared a dramatic photo of bullet-damaged hat worn by an agent during the shootout with Texas elementary school mass-murderer Salvador Ramos. 

The black and white cap can be seen torn to shreds where the bullet grazed the unknown agent’s head during the shootout with Ramos, 18, on Tuesday. 

The teen shooter reportedly shot at the agent as he entered the barricaded room with other agents, according to Fox News. 

The agent, who has not been named, is based Del Rio Sector in south Texas and the agency said that many of the agents have children who attend that school. 

‘Many of our local CBP personnel live in Uvalde; they call this community home, and they work to protect their family, friends, and neighbors every single day,’ CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a statement. 

In a separate statement, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said: ‘Without hesitation, [agents] put themselves between the shooter and students to end the bloodshed and administer medical aid. Without question, their heroism yesterday saved lives. 

‘A Border Patrol Agent was injured in the crossfire yesterday and we know the loss and trauma from this tragedy will continue to impact many other CBP families for a long time to come.’ 

CBP declined to release the agent’s name to DailyMail.com.  

Ramos, who killed 19 young children at a Robb Elementary School, reportedly was obsessed with guns and worked at Wendy’s to save up $4,000 to purchase the weapons, ammunition and a tactical-style vest.

A former co-worker of Ramos described the school shooter as a ‘rude, creepy and scruffy’ guy who she would keep her distance from because he felt unsafe.

Grace Cruz, also 18, told The Sun she worked with the ‘demented’ teen at the fast-food chain restaurant in Uvalde, Texas, located just minutes from Robb Elementary School.

She claimed Ramos openly talked about using the money he earned at Wendy’s to purchase guns and ammo, adding that he ‘suddenly quit’ weeks before Tuesday’s shooting.  

‘He told us he was saving up money for guns and ammo. We would ask him: “Why would you spend your money on that, spend it on a car or something useful,”‘ Cruz said. ‘I guess once he got enough money, he quit and stopped showing up.’

Ramos opened fire in a horrific killing spree at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday after shooting his grandmother, with whom he lived. 

He had bought two AR-15 assault rifles, bragged about them on social media and suggested he would commit an atrocity before the deadly attack. 

Earlier on Wednesday, his grandfather revealed the family had no idea he legally purchased the two weapons last week.

Cruz said Ramos worked in the Wendy’s drive-thru and was responsible for handing out orders to customers, however she claims he wasn’t very good at his job. 

She claims customers would complain about him and argued he had an unkept appearance about him. 

‘He didn’t smell, but he was definitely scruffy. Something was off about him. I didn’t feel safe around him, so I always kept my distance even though we worked the same hours,’ she told The Sun. 

‘He quit just two weeks ago, but there were a couple of times before that where he almost got fired for being rude.’

Cruz also alleged that Ramos would brag about his plans to spend his earnings on guns and stated she thought he suffered from mental illness.

‘He had mental problems, emotional problems, personal problems, every type of problem,’ she said. 

Adrian Mendes, one of the restaurant’s evening managers, claimed Ramos often kept to himself. 

‘He felt like the quiet type, the one who doesn’t say much. He didn’t really socialize with employees,’ Mendes told CNN. ‘He just worked, got paid, and came in to get his check.’

Another one of his former colleagues, who speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed he had an ‘aggressive streak’ and had would send inappropriate messages to female co-workers.

‘He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking, ‘Do you know who I am?” the young woman, who worked with Ramos until March, told The Daily Beast. ‘And he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies.’

She also claimed he would engage in fights at local parks. 

‘At the park, there’d be videos of him trying to fight people with boxing gloves. He’d take them around with him,’ she added.

Ramos used an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in the bloodbath Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He had legally bought two such rifles just days before the attack, soon after his 18th birthday, authorities said.

One of the guns was purchased at a federally licensed dealer in the Uvalde area on May 17, according to state Sen. John Whitmire, who was briefed by investigators. Ramos bought 375 rounds of ammunition the next day, then purchased the second rifle last Friday. 

On Tuesday morning, Ramos shot and wounded his grandmother at her home, then left. Neighbors called police when she staggered outside and they saw she had been shot in the face, Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine said.

Ramos then crashed his truck through a railing on the grounds at Robb Elementary School and an Uvalde school district officer exchanged fire with him and was wounded.

The teen went inside and exchanged more gunfire with two arriving Uvalde police officers, who were still outside, Considine said. Those officers were also wounded.

Dillon Silva, whose nephew was in a nearby classroom, said students were watching the Disney movie ‘Moana’ when they heard several loud pops and a bullet shattered a window. Moments later, their teacher saw the attacker stride past the door.

‘Oh, my God, he has a gun!’ the teacher shouted twice, according to Silva. ‘The teacher didn’t even have time to lock the door,’ he said.

A tactical team forced its way into the classroom where the attacker was holed up and was met with gunfire from Ramos but shot and killed him. 

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the attack.

Investigators do not yet know why Ramos targeted the school, Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Wednesday.

‘We don’t see a motive or catalyst right now,’ he said.

Just prior to the attack and as he shot his grandmother, Ramos appears to have sending direct messages in real time to a 15-year-old girl from Germany that he had met online, according to CNN. 

The girl said that at around 11.01am, Ramos called her and told her that he loved her, and then within 20 minutes shot his grandmother in a dispute over his phone bill. 

‘Ima do something to her rn [right now]’ wrote Ramos in a message at 11.10am Texas time. He added a few minutes later: ‘She’s on the phone with AT&T abojt [sic] my phone…It’s annoying’. 

At 11.21am he wrote ‘I just shot my grandma in her head’ and added in his final message: ‘Ima go shoot up a elementary school.’

Just 10 minutes later, the first 911 call came in after he crashed his grandmother’s truck outside the nearby school and exchanged gunfire with police as he stormed into the school.

She said that Ramos had sent her a selfie and that he had promised to fly to Europe and meet her this summer.

The direct messages appear to be the same Facebook messages that Texas Governor Greg Abbott described at a Wednesday press conference, incorrectly calling them ‘posts’.

Abbott said that about 30 minutes before the bloodbath, Ramos first wrote that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had shot the woman.

‘The third post, maybe less than 15 minutes before arriving at the school, was ‘I’m going to shoot an elementary school,” said Abbott.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone wrote in a tweet: ‘The messages Gov. Abbott described were private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred.’ 

‘We are closely cooperating with law enforcement in their ongoing investigation.’ 

The teen’s grandfather, Rolando Reyes, revealed Wednesday that the family had been kept in the dark about the two lethal weapons he bought.

He told ABC News: ‘I didn’t know he had weapons. If I’d have known, I would have reported it.’

Ramos is believed to have gone to live with his grandparents after rowing with his mother about cutting to WiFi at their home.

The shooter’s grandfather also revealed he was quiet and would sometimes go to work with him.

He said: ‘Sometimes I’d take him to work with me. Not all the time, but sometimes. This past year he didn’t go to school. He didn’t graduate. You would try to tell him but kids nowadays they think they know everything. 

‘He was very quiet, he didn’t talk very much.’ The teen did not live with his mother because they had ‘problems’, the grandfather added.

Uvalde, home to about 16,000 people, is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary, which has nearly 600 students in second, third and fourth grades, is a single-story brick structure in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes.

The close-knit community, built around a shaded central square, includes many Hispanic families who have lived there for generations. It sits amid fields of cabbage, onions, carrots and other vegetables. But many of the steadiest jobs are supplied by companies that produce construction materials.

The attack came as the school was counting down to the last days of the school year with a series of themed days. Tuesday was to be ‘Footloose and Fancy,’ with students wearing nice outfits.

Texas, which has some of the most gun-friendly laws in the nation, has been the site of some of the deadliest shootings in the U.S. over the past five years.

In 2018, a gunman killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. 

A year before that, a gunman shot more than two dozen people to death during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. 

In 2019, a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanics.

The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association annual convention was set to begin in Houston. 

The governor and both of Texas´ U.S. senators, all of them Republicans, were among the scheduled speakers at a forum Friday.