Innocent victims of school gun horror

Teen shooter kills 2 teachers and 19 pupils – including girl dialling 911

WITH the summer holidays about to start, ten-year-old Amerie Garza was all smiles as she held up a school certificate in a photo taken on Tuesday morning.

It was to be the last photo taken of Amerie alive. Within two hours, she was shot while trying to call the police as 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos burst into her classroom at Robb Elementary School.

Clad in black and wearing body armour, Ramos had already shot his grandmother in the face and crashed her car in a ditch near the school in Ulvade, Texas.

Women working at a nearby funeral home said when they approached Ramos to see if he needed assistance, he began shooting.

He then ran into the school through an unlocked back door and stalked the corridors before ducking into a classroom.

‘As soon as he made entry into the school, he started shooting children, teachers, whoever’s in his way,’ said Christopher Olivarez, from the Department of Public Safety. ‘He was shooting everybody.’

The bloodbath began at 11.30am. Just 30 minutes later, 21 innocent lives had been taken – 19 children, aged between seven

‘He told the children: You’re going to die’

and ten, and two teachers. Ramos met his own end in the classroom, gunned down by armed police.

Officers initially called to the car crash arrived at the scene and, on hearing shots coming from the school, ran inside.

Some started to break windows to evacuate children and teachers while others tried to draw the shooter’s attention away from potential victims. A Border Patrol officer ended the siege by shooting Ramos dead, but only after he himself had been hit. The massacre came out of the blue. Officials said yesterday that Ramos, who had bought the rifle and ammunition on his 18th birthday this month, had told a friend on social media just half an hour before the rampage that he would shoot his grandmother, 66-year-old Celia Martinez – who survived – and then disclosed he was going to attack an unnamed school. It was Robb Elementary. Amerie’s grandmother, Berlinda Arreola, said: ‘The gunman went in and he told the children, “You’re going to die”.

‘She had her phone and she called 911. And instead of grabbing it and breaking it or taking it from her, he shot her. She was sitting right next to her best friend. Her best friend was covered in her blood.

‘My granddaughter was shot and killed for trying to call 911, she died a hero trying to get help for her classmates.’

Amerie’s father, Alfred, said his daughter was ‘full of life, a jokester, always smiling’.

The Garza family gathered on the lawn of the civic centre in Uvalde, waiting late into the night with other frantic families to learn if their children had lived or died.

When the news finally came that their little ones wouldn’t be returning home that night, screams of anguish could be heard from the suddenly bereaved.

One man walked away, sobbing into his phone: ‘She is gone.’

As some turned to each other for mutual support – Uvalde is a closeknit community of only 15,000, most of them Mexican-American – a woman stood alone at the rear of the building, crying and shouting into her phone, shaking her fist and stamping her feet.

Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Rubio had also been presented with a certificate that morning. ‘She also received the good citizen award,’ said her mother Kimberly.

‘We told her we loved her and would pick her up after school. We had no idea this was goodbye.’

Tributes from parents about victims who enjoyed the simplest pleasures in life only served to underline just how young they were. Xavier Lopez, ten, had been looking forward to a summer spent swimming, said his cousin, Lisa Garza.

Miss Garza mourned the gun laws in a state where citizens can buy a rifle or handgun three

years before they are allowed to buy a beer.

The massacre – the second deadliest school shooting in the US – didn’t just bereave parents, but also children and spouses.

Eva Mireles, 44, had been a teacher for 17 years. According to her aunt, she died trying to save her pupils.

Miss Mireles was married to a police officer and had a daughter, Adalynn Ruiz, who said she was ‘the half that makes me whole’.

Miss Mireles’ colleague, motherof-four Irma Garcia, 46, was also killed. Her son, Christian Garcia, said a friend in law enforcement saw his mother shielding her pupils in her last teaching duty.

Dunblane survivor Andy Murray and Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey led the outraged global reaction to the school shooting.

McConaughey, who was born in Ulvade, slammed the spate of mass shootings across America as ‘an epidemic we can control’.

Tennis star Murray blasted the shocking scenes as ‘f ****** madness’ in a now deleted tweet.