Texas gunman Salvador Ramos said 'what do I have here?' before opening fire on classroom

The children come with their parents to lay flowers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

In their eyes is a lack of comprehension - they cannot understand what happened here on Tuesday afternoon. Neither can the adults.

The more we learn about the gunman the more chilling, and horrific, is the insight into Salvador Ramos' cruelty.

One woman, Anita Aviles, whose granddaughter narrowly escaped the slaughter, told ITV News that Ramos had entered a classroom through an unlocked door, looked at the classroom full of children, and said, "What do I have here?"

He then opened fire.

"My granddaughter can't take that out of her mind what he said... she had to run out the window" - Anita Alves emotionally recounts her granddaughter's escape

Ramos was inside the school for an hour before he was finally confronted by a SWAT team and shot dead. That raises many questions for the police who have clearly established protocols to storm schools immediately in the event of an active shooter situation.

Ramos was armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

All were purchased legally last week from an authorised dealer, just a few days after his 18th birthday.

He had shot and gravely wounded his own grandmother before launching his assault on the school.

What the authorities cannot explain and what haunts this community is the question of why?

In the city of Buffalo two weeks ago the gunman, Payton Gendron, was a white supremacist fanatic. His fringe ideology was a grotesque explanation for his actions.

But beyond Ramos being socially awkward, there are no signs of why he would attack a classroom full of 10-year-olds.

Ramos had no known mental illness and no criminal history.

In a way, that is even more disturbing. He is the killer who came from nowhere.

He is the gunman who attacked the greatest treasure of his own community, the children, with a savagery that is unfathomable.

Uvalde is in desperate pain. This small, close-knit, predominantly Hispanic town close to the border with Mexico is seeking answers. And finding only a mystery that it may never solve.

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