The uncle of the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooter desperately pleaded with a police dispatcher to let him talk to his nephew so he could convince the teen to end his deadly rampage, according to a newly released 911 recording.
"Everything I tell him, he does listen to me," Armando Ramos said during the emotional call. "Maybe he could stand down or do something to turn himself in."
Ramos said his nephew, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, had been upset the night before because his grandmother was "bugging him," according to the chilling recording.
"Oh my God, please, please, don't do nothing stupid," said Armando Ramos, apparently imagining what he would say to his nephew. "I think he's shooting kids."
But the distraught uncle's offer reportedly came right around the time that police fatally shot 18-year-old Salvador Ramos inside Robb Elementary School, where he slaughtered 19 students and two teachers on May 24, 2022.
The 911 call was among a trove of audio and video recordings released by Uvalde officials Saturday in response to a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press and other news organizations.
Another recording captured a terrified 10-year-old, Khloie Torres, whispering into a phone as she begged a 911 dispatcher for help.
"Please, I don't want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh, my God," the fourth-grader said.
At one point, the dispatcher asked Khloie if many people were hiding with her, AP said.
"No, it's just me and a couple of friends. A lot of people are ... gone," said Khloie, who survived.
Nearly 400 law enforcement officers waited more than 70 minutes before storming a classroom full of casualties and killing Salvador Ramos.
The delayed response has been widely criticized, including by the U.S. Justice Department, with Attorney General Merrick Garland calling it a "failure" and saying the victims and survivors "deserved better."
A man whose 9-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was killed during the mass shooting said the recordings released Saturday pointed to the consequences of "the waiting and waiting and waiting."
"Perhaps if they were to have breached earlier, they would have saved some lives, including my niece's," Jesse Rizo told AP.
