FBI were TOLD of threat to attack school by gamer HOURS before massacre, but was it Salvador Ramos?
A gamer allegedly reported a chilling threat to the FBI hours before 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos killed 21 people in a Texas school massacre on Tuesday, May 24.
An unidentified woman was playing the 2016 survival horror multiplayer online game 'Dead by Daylight' when she heard a male player becoming angry after losing a match. She said the player had "started saying they were going to shoot up a school," so she recorded the messages and sent the audio to the FBI as well as the developers of the game, Behavior Interactive.
RELATED ARTICLES
Where is Salvador Ramos's mother? Shooter's grandmother was set to evict drug-addled mom from home
Chilling video shows Texas shooter suspect Salvador Ramos entering school as death toll rises to 22
“So I have no idea if they were joking or what but they were super angry about losing and started saying they were going to shoot up a school and they mentioned they had some type of gun and kept saying it was going to be all of our fault," the concerned player wrote on Reddit.
The user later went over the recording and revealed in comments that the gun he mentioned was an AR-15, the same weapon Ramos used to end the lives of 19 students and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. "[I] recorded the entire post-chat and we all kind of brushed it off as him just saying edge lord type sh*t but I just am like in disbelief because I’ve never seen someone say that before," she wrote in a post on the game's subreddit r/deadbydaylight.
Authorities in #Uvalde, Texas say Salvador Raimondo Ramos, 18, is the gunman who killed his grandmother before murdering 14 young children at a school & a teacher. Two officers were also shot but survived. He was reportedly killed by responding police. https://t.co/5RAfTmRBJq pic.twitter.com/ji6wQfR1Qr
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) May 24, 2022
According to the Daily Mail, the game 'Dead by Daylight' is heavily inspired by slasher films "such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and other survival-horror media." A match is played by five participants, four of whom are assigned the role of "The Survivors" and the other becomes "The Killer." The survivors, if caught, are impaled on hooks and sacrificed by the killer.
The male player who threatened to shoot up a school was reportedly playing the "The Killer" when he lost a match and became enraged. "I did report them to the FBI," the concerned user wrote. "[H]owever I’m a little stressed because when I went back to watch exactly what they said the person said 'what if I shoot up a school tomorrow :)'" When asked by another Redditor if she thought the threats were linked to the Texas school shooting, the player responded, "[I] don’t know, the gun he mentioned was an AR-15 with I think an extended clip or something but I don’t know. I feel horrible for those children and families."
One of Ramos's friends claimed he was known for making threats while playing video games online. "I do know someone that used to play Call of Duty with him online and he would talk about school shootings all the time but everyone on the game always thought he was joking," a female Instagram friend of Ramos' told The Sun.
"All reports filed by players are acted upon in a timely manner," the game's developers Behaviour Interactive told the Daily Mail in a statement. "That said, we, unfortunately, can’t share specific details publicly." It added, "Creating a safe space where our fans feel secure is a core value for Dead by Daylight. That’s why we have an active team dedicated to offering them support and monitoring activities communicated to them via the in-game reporting system. In the case of potential real-life threats, we have strict reporting processes involving cybercrime units to ensure that each situation is addressed by competent authorities."
The FBI hasn't responded to the claims at the time of publication.