Uvalde school district was monitoring students’ social media pages for threats against staff or site

Texas school officials had been monitoring students’ social media prior to the deadly shooting in Uvalde Tuesday, it has been revealed – but still failed to pick up on concerning posts from the teenage gunman in the days leading up to the tragedy.

As an 18th birthday present to himself earlier this month, now-deceased suspect Salvador Romas bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media – including in ominous messages sent hours before the killing started.

The teen’s photo-op also saw him share an image to his since-scrubbed Instagram account, of him cradling the magazine of a rifle on his lap.

The ensuing massacre – the deadliest at a US elementary school since the infamous 2012 Sandy Hook shooting – left 19 students aged under 11 and two adults at Uvalde Elementary dead. Romas also reportedly shot his 66-year-old grandmother.

Now, Uvalde School officials say they had been monitoring its students’ social media pages using an advanced AI-based service called Social Sentinel, designed to recognize signals of potential harm found in digital conversations.

The district said Monday that is had been using the platform ‘to monitor all social media with a connection to Uvalde as a measure to identify any possible threats that might be made against students and or staff within the school district.’

Salvador Ramos, 18, from Uvalde, fatally shot 19 children and two adults in Tuesday’s shooting. Ramos shared photos of guns to social media in the days leading up to the massacre

This photo of two AR15-style rifles appeared on Romas’ Instagram account just three days before the massacre at Robb Elementary school. He then shared it in a tagged post hours before the shooting

The teen also shared an image to Instagram of him holding the magazine of a rifle. His account was taken down shortly after Governor Greg Abbott confirmed his name

See also  Nicola Sturgeon is to RESIGN as First Minister of Scotland

According to its creators, the service – powered by advanced linguistics technology – scans and analyzes digital content to pick out and flag potential safety and security risks, as well as mental health and social and emotional concerns.

The software scans selected digital content – in this case, thousands of students’ social media accounts – and identifies language that fit those criteria.

The powerful technology is designed to then alerts leaders if a community member is showing signs of crisis, so they can intervene before an incident occurs.

The service scans threatening images as well as its associated text before determining whether it is something community leaders should look into. 

However, in this particular instance, the technology fell short – failing to spot Romas’ objectively concerning posts and notify district officials.

It is not immediately clear why the technology failed. DailyMail.com reached out to Social Sentinel and Uvalde district staffers for comment on the software’s apparent failure Wednesday morning, but did not immediately hear back.