No students or staff will return to Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, the site of last month’s tragic massacre, Hal Harel, head of Uwalde’s consolidated independent school district, confirmed on Friday.
“We will not return to this campus,” Harel said during a special meeting of the board of trustees, adding that he expects a new address for the school in the “very near future.”
“Our children, our staff, we will not return.”
About a week and a half before the meeting, an 18-year-old gunman entered a primary school and killed 19 students and two teachers in the deadliest mass shooting at a school in nearly a decade.
The chief’s reassurance was followed by a weeping mother speaking to the committee and begging the incoming sophomores who had to attend Rob Elementary School to be relocated, sobbing and saying that her son had been traumatized by the violence.
“My son is deadly afraid of school now,” said the mother. “What he knows right now is that when he goes to another school, he will be shot by a bad person.
As a traumatized community is rocked by senseless violence, many questions about the massacre remain, and authorities often provide conflicting information about exactly how the attack unfolded. Among the obscure details: how the shooter got inside.
The Texas Public Safety Department initially said a teacher propped an open door – only to say the teacher closed the door when she learned there was a shooter on campus.
A teacher who resigned himself to dying
Emilia Marin, a primary school teacher, was walking outside the school on May 24 to help a colleague bring food for a party at the end of the year when she saw a crash, according to her lawyer.
What follows will be “the most horrible thing anyone could endure,” her lawyer, Don Flanari, told CNN.
Marin entered the school to report the crash and left the door open with a stone, according to Flanari, who is helping Marin with a possible civil lawsuit against the manufacturers of the weapons used in the massacre.
When Marin returned to the door – still on the line with the 911 operators – she saw her colleague running away and heard people across the street in the funeral home shouting, “He has a gun!”
Marin saw the shooter approach, Flanari said, so she kicked the door open and ran to a nearby classroom next door, huddled under the counter.
It was there that Marin heard gunshots, Flanari said; first outdoors, then inside the school. Her call to 911 was interrupted. She grabbed chairs and then boxes to hide her location. She tried to stay still.
“Frozen” with fear, Marin received a message from his daughter asking if she was safe. “There’s a shooter. He’s shooting. He’s here,” Marin wrote, according to her lawyer. A moment later, Marin writes that he hears the police.
In the end, Marin had to turn off his phone, convinced that the shooter would hear her, said her lawyer, who added that she had heard “every shot” at school.
“She thought he would come in and kill her and put up with it,” Flanari said. She really thought she wouldn’t come out alive.
The attacker targeted another classroom and never met Marin, her lawyer said. Her grandson, who is a student at Rob’s elementary school, was also elsewhere and survived. But Marin’s ordeal soon deepened in the days after the shooting, after authorities said the gunman entered the school through a door left open.
“She felt alone, as if she couldn’t even grieve,” Flanari said. “She guessed, ‘Didn’t I do that?'” He added.
The DPS later clarified that the shooter had entered through an unlocked door. However, the whole experience affected her mental health, Flanari said. She had to see a neurologist because “she can’t stop shivering,” he said.
Flanari said investigators told Marin, “No, we watched the video, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Asked if Marin would return to the classroom, Flanari said: “I don’t think he will ever be able to return to the school campus.”
Although Marin has no plans to sue the school, police or school district, Flanari said, a petition was filed Thursday to remove Daniel Defense, the maker of the firearms used in the attack, according to court documents obtained from CNN.
The petition for a preliminary action does not accuse the arms manufacturer of any wrongdoing, but seeks to ascertain whether the petitioner has grounds to bring an action against Daniel Defense. CNN turned to Daniel Defense for a response to the submission.
“There are many bodies”
Details of the massacre continue to come out more than a week later.
Elementary school student Rob called 911 on the day of the shooting, fearing for her life and her teacher, according to a transcript of a conversation reviewed by the New York Times.
“There are a lot of bodies,” 10-year-old student Chloe Torres told the dispatcher, according to the newspaper.
The call was made at 12:10 p.m., more than 30 minutes after the shooting began at the school.
“I don’t want to die, my teacher is dead, my teacher is dead, please send help, send help to my teacher, she was shot, but she is still alive.” That’s what Torres said, according to a review of the Times transcript.
The call lasted 17 minutes and 11 minutes after it, the sound of a shot could be heard, writes Times.
The victim’s father also wants answers from the gun manufacturer
On Friday, lawyers for the father of 10-year-old victim Ameri Garza also demanded answers from the gun manufacturer.
A letter issued on behalf of Alfred Garza III asked the manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle used in the massacre to provide all marketing information, especially a strategy aimed at teenagers and children, according to lawyers.
The statement said Garza’s Texas attorneys, Michal Watts and Charla Aldous, have partnered with Josh Coscoff, who represents nine shooting families at Sandy Hook Elementary School in a $ 73 million deal against Remington, the maker of the AR-15 used in the 2012 school shooting.
“She would like me to do everything I can so that this will never happen again to any other child,” Alfred Garza III said in a statement. “I have to fight her battle.”
In addition to marketing and advertising strategies, lawyers are asking Georgia Defense-based Daniel Defense for information on “inciting and encouraging the violent use of these weapons; for your online shopping system; and for your communications, on any platform, with the Uvalde shooter; and to your consciousness of the previous use of AR-15-style rifles in mass shootings. “
“Daniel Defense said they are praying for the Uwalde families. They must support these prayers with meaningful action,” Koskov said.
Lawyers representing Kimberly Garcia, Garza’s mother, also sent a letter to Daniel Defense urging the company to “keep all potentially relevant information” related to the shooting, which includes but is not limited to “all physical, electronic and documentary evidence.” potentially related to the company ‘s marketing of AR – 15 style rifles.
Daniel Defense has not responded to numerous requests from CNN for comment.
On his website, Daniel Defense said he would “cooperate with all federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in their investigations” and described the Uwalde shooting as an “act of evil.”
Preliminary death certificates for 20 victims show that they died from gunshot wounds, according to the Uwalde County Magistrate’s Court. CNN is expecting a report on the additional victim. The shooter also died from gunshot wounds.
Survivors of the shooting of Uwalde and Buffalo to testify
Next week, survivors and others affected by the recent shootings in Buffalo and Uwalde will testify before the House Committee of Supervisors, according to the commission’s website. An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, killing 10 people in a racist attack.
Witnesses to the committee’s hearing next Wednesday will include Mia Serilo, a fourth-grader at Rob Elementary School; Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Alexandria “Lexi” Rubio was killed at Rob Elementary School; Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was wounded at Buffalo; and Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician in Uwalde. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramagia will also testify.
The announcement of the hearing in Washington came on the same day that a Texas lawmaker set up a commission to “investigate” the Uwalde shooting.
“The fact that we still don’t have a clear picture of what exactly happened in Uwalde is outrageous,” Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, said in a statement Friday.
Texas State Representative Dustin Burroughs, a Republican, Joe Moody, a Democrat, and retired Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, a Republican, have been appointed to the committee.
The US senator is calling for more answers
Investigators from local, state and federal agencies say they are working to find out more about the circumstances behind the Uwalde shooting.
Warrants have been issued to search the shooter’s mobile phone, the vehicle and the home of his grandparents, according to court records obtained by CNN. The order gives investigators the power to forensicly retrieve a cell phone – which was next to his body – in search of a motive.
However, criticism continues as to whether the authorities reacted quickly enough to neutralize the shooter, as well as the lack of transparency on the part of some law enforcement officials after the shooting.
According to a history published by the Texas DPS, several calls to 911 were made by children in the classroom where the attacker was while police were stationed outside the room.
And …
Add Comment