Uvalde’s school massacre remains elusive one year later

The Texas Asymmetric Anniversary of Shooting Robb Elementary Teacher Annihilation: It’s Not the Place to Be Safe, But It Has Be Been Done

She couldn’t promise that we’re going to be safe. “Before, I would tell my kids, ‘We’re safe. I promise. I just felt like I can’t make those promises. This year it was ‘We’re safer than we’ve ever been.’ I think it’s correct, we had the officers from the Department of Public Safety on campus for the entire year. I did not say, “I promise we’re safe.”

And then after the drill is over? Is it possible that the calming down of the children who didn’t take it well resulted in the calming of herself? “You will continue with your day of teaching,” she said.

Sometimes those kids are triggered by that. They knew that it was coming, but every drill this year was already announced, and prepared for before we had it.

And of course, there are the safety drills — for those who survived the shooting, not a just-in-case exercise, but a reenactment of what actually happened.

As a result, the shadow of their trauma hung over them as they dealt with normal things. Kids became nervous if they saw something in the hallway, so Ogburn would close that curtain she bought for her door. Even if the activity was not near the campus, everyone would be on edge. The Department of Public Safety officers are roaming the building.

She told NPR that she had bought a device that would make it difficult for them to open the door. I put a curtain down so you can’t see in my door if there’s something happening. We’ve just thought of more safety this year than how cute my room is going to look.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177492668/uvalde-texas-anniversary-shooting-robb-elementary-teacher

“This isn’t going to make us strong,” Ms. Ogburn recalls of the ’70s at the San Antonio Mall

“There was lots of controversy in town and screaming and yelling about things. It kind of makes you feel like we’re not strong. This is literally tearing our community apart,” Ogburn said. It was tearing us apart instead of bringing us together.

When I take my daughters to the San Antonio mall, I think about where they could go if something were to happen. Where can we hide? Where could we run to? Where can we protect ourselves from this?

“I’ve had to roll myself out of bed five minutes before I’m supposed to be at work,” she admitted. The desire to go to work and teach hasn’t been there this year because of that motivation, as it was in the past.

She said she still loved her job and she was happy to see the children again. Is it related to the “suck it up” part? It barely mattered that she was an adult — those coping mechanisms worked overtime all year.

The Uvalde community was devastated by the Robb shooting, but it wasn’t a day before they were taken into a proper care. A mother and a friend remembers her

The Uvalde community has been torn apart by the shooting at Robb Elementary. The town’s social safety net had a hole in it. The troubled teenager who went to the shooting range didn’t get mental health counseling that might have kept him from carrying it out. Counseling services were hardly offered in the town.

“If I didn’t go back, why would any of the children that were in my class want to go back to school?” she said. “So I had to suck it up and do what I had to do for my family.”

“I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, depression, all those things,” she said. “And I just can’t imagine – I’m an adult, I’ve developed some coping mechanisms through my life — I just can’t even imagine, like, as a child that was nine years old that went through this, how they’re coping and moving forward. Not moving on, but moving forward from this.”

The sentiment reflects on how the Robb shooting and its aftermath have impacted Uvalde over the past year. Some families have sued the city. Anger exploded over which families should be entitled to a share of the millions of dollars that was donated for victims. Tension has bubbled up over parents’ demands for gun control.

Many victims’ relatives do not think healing can begin until there is some kind of closure. But closure has been impossible, because 12 months later there are still many unresolved questions about what happened that day — most stemming from the failed police response. It took 77 minutes to kill the man in the classroom. Some of the victims slowly bled to death during the more than hour they were there.

What did you learn when you were born? How you made it, how you lost it, and how to live in the moment that you didn’t

She said that she had a shelf by the door, just like it was at Robb last year. I’m not sure, I would push that up against the door, and then stack chairs. A lot of that stuff went through my head all year long – what can we do just to maybe give us a little more time?”

One thing that often happened was keeping track of items she could use to barricade her classroom door if it were to happen again.

In the year since 19 children and two teachers were killed inside their classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the search for healing has been elusive.

There are ongoing local, state and federal investigations about the details of what happened and why the law enforcement response failed so badly. Many surviving families are pinning their hopes for closure on their findings. Others are not sure. But in the meantime, much of the community is suspended in its grief, grasping still for a narrative of what happened on that tragic day, and searching for ways to cope.

In the year since their sister — fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles — was killed in her classroom, her sisters Maggie Mireles and Sandra Mireles Sanders have transformed their lives.

Everything we do is for her. “You mean everything,” Sandra said. It isn’t good, but for me it is, because that is how I’ll be able to live for her.

There are pictures in every room of her home, and in the closets and next to her bed, in tribute to her sister. She stores bins full of stuffed animals and dried flowers from Eva’s funeral and from the memorials that popped up across Uvalde after the tragedy. The sisters drape themselves in clothes and jewelry bearing Eva’s name. And their SUVs each have custom license plates that commemorate the day she was killed.

This has been an important part of their healing process. Sometimes it makes them feel better, and sometimes it only makes them closer to their sister. The sisters feel swallowed by grief and they are trying to understand what happened that day. From one of Eva’s surviving students, they’ve learned tidbits about their sister’s fight to stay alive. That she used a plastic bag to try to tourniquet a bleeding arm. She was repeating that she didn’t want to die. Many details still don’t match up.

So they keep searching for ways to piece it all together. On Monday, they visited their sister’s classroom, thinking that it would give them a sense of closure. The school district allowed them an hour inside. Sandra sat on the floor with her rosary and prayed. They found, though, that the visit only raised more questions in their minds.

A year after Uvaldes school massacre healing remains elusive: Aranda’s visit to Uvalde is hard to process, but you get chills when you come

Aranda wasn’t affected by the tragedy. He is not from Uvalde. He lives in San Antonio. But the massacre devastated him emotionally, and so every few weekends since the shooting, he’s driven the 90 minutes from his home to visit Uvalde, to leave flowers at the various memorials, and to reflect.

“Yeah, it’s been a year, but it’s still hard to process it. Did this really happen here? he said. You get chills when you come. To see all these crosses, it really hits you, it’s real.

He visits the town so frequently because it’s hard to accept. Because he often finds himself drifting away from acceptance. He hopes his presence in town will bring some solace to the victims’ families, if he leaves a flower.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177729989/a-year-after-uvaldes-school-massacre-healing-remains-elusive

A Year After Usade School Massacre Healing Remains Impossible: A Victim’s Story About Veronica and Jerry Mata

There were 19 children killed in the massacre, of which one was the 10-year-old daughter of Veronica and Jerry Mata. Veronica doesn’t know if her daughter died instantly or if she survived if the police had acted faster.

She said that she couldn’t begin the healing process because of the “what-if” questions. I need to know what happened before I can do anything.

The Matas are willing to heal at some point. They’re raising funds to establish an endowed scholarship in her name. They’ve become among the most active and vocal of Uvalde’s surviving parents to lobby for gun reform. They even took several months of therapy. Jerry was forced to make a hard decision.

The therapy helped, he said. But about five months in his therapist delivered the news. She had gotten a new job and was leaving Uvalde. For Jerry, that was it. He said he didn’t want to start therapy again. He’ll search for other ways to heal, as he and his wife continue fighting to honor Tess’s memory.

The Children’s Chapel of South Texas arrived in Uvalde within an hour of the shooting, and eventually opened a counseling center in the town.

At first, Sokol said, people were skeptical of accepting therapy. More families have signed up in the last few months.

There is a lot of pain from the past and what happened. She said that there was still a lot of anxiety about the future. Is my safety a concern? Is my child safe? Who am I sure I can trust? It took a full year for us to feel sure that families will come.

For some it’s too early. Sokol said he can’t talk about it. “We have to respect their process, and that’s ok.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177729989/a-year-after-uvaldes-school-massacre-healing-remains-elusive

Uvalde County Commissioner’s “Commentary on a Matter of Kindness and Kindness,” Rev. Ronald Garza, M.A. F. Churlich, New Jersey, Jan. 20, 2003

Ronald Garza is a Uvalde county commissioner and his main job is to listen to his people. And as time has passed since the shooting, more of them have expressed to him their desire for Uvalde to turn the page on the tragedy and move on.

Some people question what the parents want now. What do they want now?'” Garza said. “I’m quick to remind them, ‘Hey wait a minute.’ You did not lose a child. You didn’t lose a grandchild. You didn’t have to go identify a body maybe with a face blown off, so just back off.'”

Some in town would want to put the whole thing behind them. Uvalde isn’t wanted to be defined by the tragedy. The process cannot begin until the surviving families have gotten answers, accountability and reforms, he said.