Stephanie Dazio, Associated Press Published Thursday, May 26, 2022, 8:42 PM EDT Last Updated on Thursday, May 26, 2022, 10:55 PM EDT
Irma Garcia’s family was already rocked by her death in a shooting at a Texas school that targeted her fourth-grade classroom, killing her classmate and 19 students.
Then, just two days after the attack, her grieving husband fainted and died at home of a heart attack, a family member said.
Joe Garcia, 50, left flowers at his wife’s memorial on Thursday morning in Uwalde, Texas, and returned home, where he “almost fell” and died, his nephew John Martinez told The New York Times.
Married for 24 years, the couple has four children.
Martinez told The Detroit Free Press that the family was struggling to find out that while the couple’s eldest son was training to fight in the Marines, his mother had been shot.
“Such things should not happen in schools,” he told the newspaper.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Rushing-Estes-Knowles morgue have confirmed Joe Garcia’s death to the Associated Press. The AP failed to contact Garcia family members on Thursday.
The motive for the massacre – the deadliest school shooting in the country since the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut – remains under investigation, with authorities claiming the 18-year-old shooter had no known criminal or mental history.
The riot shook a country already tired of gun violence and shattered the Uwalde community, a predominantly Latin American city of about 16,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border.
The Garcia family loved to have a barbecue, writes 48-year-old Irma in an online letter to her students at Rob Elementary School. Irma loved listening to music and traveling to Konkan, a community along the Frio River about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Uwalde.
The couple’s eldest child, Christian, is a Marine. The couple’s other son, Jose, is studying at Texas State University. Their eldest daughter Lilyana is a sophomore and her younger sister is in seventh grade.
The school year, which was to end on Thursday, was Irma’s 23rd year of teaching, all in Rob. She was previously named Teacher of the Year at the school and won the Trinity Award for Excellence in Education 2019 from Trinity University.
“Mrs. Irma Garcia was my mentor when I started teaching,” wrote her colleague Alison McCullough when Irma was named Teacher of the Year. “The wealth of knowledge and patience she showed me changed my life.
For five years, Irma taught with Eva Mireles, who was also killed.
The suspect, Salvador Ramos, was in the classroom for more than an hour before being killed in a shootout with police, authorities said.
“Welcome to 4th grade! We have a wonderful year ahead of us! ” Mireles wrote an online letter to incoming students last year.
Associated Press reporter Jamie Stengl of Dallas contributed to the report.
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