WWALDE, Texas (AP) – Grave bearers wore white shirts and gloves. The desert brown church with the high bell tower was full to overflow. There was a 10-year-old girl in the coffin who loved purple.
Hundreds of mourners gathered for a funeral service for Ameri Joe Garza, a smiling fourth-grader who was killed a week ago when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos raided her primary school in Uwalde, Texas, on Tuesday afternoon and set fire to her classroom. Amery’s funeral was the first since the massacre, with Maite Rodriguez’s funeral scheduled for later Tuesday at Uwalde’s funeral home.
Nineteen more funerals are planned for the next two and a half weeks for 19 children and two teachers who were killed in this classroom on May 24.
The grieving Erica Santiago, her husband, and their two children wore purple shirts adorned with images of Ameri’s funeral victims. She described Amery as “a nice little girl who smiled a lot” and who was “so modest and charismatic but full of life.”
Santiago said her 10-year-old son Adriel watched in horror when news reports first showed images of people killed and he recognized his friends Amery and Matt.
“He told me he didn’t want to go to school, fearing it might happen,” Santiago said. “He told me, ‘Mom, I just don’t feel safe.’
The visit for one of the teachers, 48-year-old Irma Garcia, was also on Tuesday, along with visits for the children Nevae Bravo and Jose Flores Jr.
Vincent Salazar’s 11-year-old daughter, Leila, has the last of the planned services – her visit is on June 15 with the funeral the next day. Salazar said the family would probably not see Leila’s body before the visit.
“I understand that there were other children, but we are just waiting for her to return,” Salazar said. “That’s all we’re focused on.”
Uvalde County Peace Judge Eulalio Lalo Diaz Jr. said the bodies of all 21 victims were first sent to the San Antonio medical experts’ office for autopsies, which he said was standard for a major crime. Then, as there was not enough space in Uwalde’s two burial houses, many bodies were sent to funeral homes outside the city until the services approached. Funeral homes in Uwalde work with families when they can see their loved ones, he said.
“This is mainly due to the number of victims,” Diaz said, asking, “Where do you keep so many people?”
Diaz said the autopsy was complete. He declined to discuss preliminary results and said the final reports would take three to four months.
Vincent Salazar said he and his family go on as many visits as possible to pay tribute to other victims and their families.
“We don’t have to go to funerals because we still take care of things hour by hour, day after day here,” Salazar said. “We have so many things happening to our people. You have to set everything up – obituaries, death certificates, funeral arrangements.
“That’s all we’re focused on right now – getting her back and being able to let her rest,” Salazar told Leila. “It is.”
Investigators are still searching for answers as to how the police reacted to the shooting, and the US Department of Justice is reviewing the actions of law enforcement agencies.
The blame for the torturous delay in killing the shooter – even when parents outside begged police to rush and panicked children called 911 inside – was blamed on local school district police chief Pete Aredondo after the state police director said Aredondo made the “wrong decision” not to break into the classroom, believing that the shooter was barricaded inside and the children were not at risk.
Stephen McCrow, head of the Texas Public Safety Department, said Friday that after following the shooter into the building, officers waited more than an hour to break into the classroom. The revelation raised new questions about whether lives were lost because officers did not act more quickly to stop the shooter, who was eventually killed by tactical Border Patrol officers.
State police said on Tuesday that a teacher who at one point opened the school’s outer door had closed it before the attacker used it to enter.
However, the door did not lock, police said. Authorities initially said Ramos entered through a door she propped up.
Instead, investigators said the unidentified teacher closed the open door when she learned there was a shooter on campus and ran to pick up her phone and call 911, said Travis Considine, Texas’s chief communications officer. Public Safety Department. Investigators are clarifying why the door is not locked.
Jacob Albarado, a border patrol agent who rushed to the school with a rifle borrowed from his barber, said Tuesday that it was chaotic when he arrived in search of his daughter and wife. Both were physically unharmed in the attack, he said.
“I believe everyone there was doing the best they could given the circumstances,” he told NBC’s Today Show. “I believe that everyone there did their best.”
Authorities said Ramos legally purchased two weapons shortly before the school attack: an AR-style rifle on May 17 and a second rifle on May 20. He has just turned 18, which allows him to purchase weapons under federal law.
President Joe Biden’s long-planned meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday shifted to gun control following what happened in Uwalde and a week earlier in Buffalo, New York, where 10 blacks were killed by a racist anti-racist gunman. replacement ‘. ”
Ardern won gun control measures after a white supporter killed 51 Muslim worshipers in two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. Less than a month later, all but one of the country’s 120 lawmakers voted. in favor of banning semi-automatic military-style weapons.
Biden told reporters he would “meet with the Arms Congress, I promise you,” but the White House acknowledged that winning new weapons legislation would be a step up from an evenly divided Congress.
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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.
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