UVALDE, Texas – The first shots came from the hallway outside the classroom. Arnulfo Reyes, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary School, quickly recalled the active shooter training he had rehearsed so many times and told his 11 students to sit under their desks and “act like they were asleep “.
A black shadow appeared at one of the classroom doors and a fireball exploded from the tip of what looked like a rifle. Mr. Reyes felt a bullet pierce his arm, ripping off a piece of flesh and bones. Then the gunman turned on the children. The fury was so brutal and so rapid, the professor said, that he did not hear a single groan from them as their bodies were shattered.
Mr. Reyes was lying in a puddle of his own blood for what seemed like an eternity until he heard police officers gather in the hallway just outside the classroom door. His pupils were silent, dead, or dying; a few more children from an adjoining classroom were still alive, asking for help. Agents will explode and save us at any moment, it was said. But the minutes passed and no rescue came.
About half an hour later, the gunman, sitting near where Mr. Reyes was lying on the ground, seemed to be making fun of him. He aimed his weapon at the teacher’s back and fired again.
“I think about it more and more. What could they have done differently? ”Mr Reyes said in an interview recounting the events of May 24, when a mass shooting at the school left 19 students and two teachers dead.
He described the agony the victims felt when police gathered in the hallway postponed entry to classrooms where the gunman was hiding, waiting about 78 minutes for a delayed response that a preliminary police investigation suggests which was complicated by the search for a key. and a decision to try to protect the lives of the agents who responded.
“I kept waiting for someone to come,” Mr. Reyes said. “But when I didn’t see anyone coming in, I just thought no one was coming.”
More than a month after the tragedy, as Mr. Reyes tries to recover from the serious injuries he suffered, the memories of that day repeatedly run through his mind. The day began with a jovial end-of-year awards ceremony, after which nearly half of Mr. 18’s fourth-graders. Reyes had gone home with his parents. Eleven stayed because they wanted to see the movie “The Addams Family.”
“It had to be an easy day, just before the summer break,” he recalled.
Out of nowhere, Mr. Reyes and his students heard what they now know were shots coming from the hallway. Powerful explosions sprayed rubble on his classroom. “There were pieces of wall flying,” he said.
The gunman first entered Room 112, which was connected to Mr. Reyes’ classroom by another door. He fired indiscriminately, police said, and fatally wounded two teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, and several of his students.
Mr. Reyes addressed his students. “Okay, we’ve already practiced that. Put yourself under the desks, okay? Close your eyes and pretend you’re asleep,” he recalled saying.
“I didn’t want them to see anything.”
Mr. Reyes does not remember whether the gunman entered through the door that connected the two rooms or whether he returned to the hallway. But the next thing he remembers is seeing a ghostly figure with a black sweatshirt over his head and what looked like a black medical mask that hid half of his face.
“I just see that shadow and his eyes,” he said.
Then came two sparks from a rifle, aimed at him. “He shot me first,” he said. The impact caused a burning shock through his left arm that felt like hot lava, he said. A large part of his forearm was missing.
The gunman quickly turned his rifle toward the students, triggering a rain of fire that was so rapid and ruthless that it ended almost as soon as it began and there was nothing but silence in the room. “They were probably killed instantly,” Mr. Reyes, though, said some of them may have died during the long wait. Maybe, he said, they kept quiet because “they were in a state of shock.”
The first cops arrived outside the classroom door about three minutes after the gunman entered the school, according to a preliminary schedule. After the initial attack, Mr. Reyes, I could hear them talking to each other in the hallway outside.
At one point, he heard one of the officers shout at the gunman, “Get out, we want to talk to you!” The gunman did not respond, although police said two officers suffered scraper injuries when he fired a burst at the classroom door. The police talk fell silent. “He didn’t hear anything anymore,” Mr. Reyes said.
Most of his students were probably beyond savings, Mr. Reyes. But at least one surviving child in the classroom next door must also have heard the officers, he said, because he heard someone calling for help.
“Officers, come in,” a small voice heard. “We’re in here.”
For a few minutes, the gunman walked around the classroom, then sat down at the teacher’s desk while Mr. Reyes was lying face down on the floor below. In what he thought was an attempt to make fun of him, or to make sure he was dead, the gunman let a cup of water drip from a desk on Mr. Reyes’ back. . Then the gunman smeared some of Mr. Reyes’ blood on the teacher’s face and placed the teacher’s phone on his back, which kept ringing as desperate relatives tried to contact him. he.
It looked like he was trying to provoke a reaction, Mr. Reyes. “He would make sure I was dead too. I mean, I had nothing to lose.”
About 30 minutes after entering the room, apparently unaware if Mr. Reyes could still be alive, the gunman shot him a second time, this time in the lower back. Mr Reyes said at the time he made sure he would not survive. “I won’t get it,” he told himself. “I’m going to bleed.”
He then heard the gunman return to room 112. More shots were fired. He later heard the gunman close the shutters of a window facing the outside.
Mr. Reyes does not remember how much longer he spent, but suddenly he heard tables sliding and banging hard in the next room. There were more shots. Then silence.
A man who was part of a Border Patrol team that had broken into the classroom next door and killed the gunman approached Mr. Reyes and urged him to “get up if he can.” When he couldn’t, the officer dragged him by the toe of his pants out of the butcher shop. “He asked for help to take me. I was too heavy,” he said, sharing a strange smile.
Another agent, he said, suddenly shouted an insult. “There are kids down here!”
Some of them were still alive in the adjoining classroom. The school was suddenly a swarm of cops, doctors, ambulances and, outside, hysterical parents. Mr. Reyes was taken to a San Antonio hospital, where he underwent several surgeries.
Doctors placed a metal plate about six inches long on his arm for his open wound, covering it with a skin graft from his right leg. A couple of drainage bags still collect fluids coming from the lower back and arm. He will not regain full arm movement, doctors have told him.
He has now returned to his modest home in Uvalde, a town where he has lived since he was a child. It is decorated with antiques and inspiring signs. “All you need is love,” says one of them, and, “It takes a big heart to help form small minds.”
He had dreamed of becoming a lawyer, he said, but 18 years ago he found his vocation as an elementary school teacher, the last 10 of them at Robb Elementary.
After a difficult year of distance learning due to the pandemic, Mr. Reyes was glad to see all of his students return to class in 2022. “This year was different, I felt it,” he said. “They had a close bond. They wanted to learn.”
When he thinks of the students who died in his classroom that day, most of them barely 10 years old, he finds himself reminding them not of death, but of life.
There was Rojelio Torres, who had suddenly taken himself seriously in learning his multiplication and division. “She was very ambitious. I wanted to be good at everything. “
There was José Flores, who lived for lunch and for leisure and was a “corajudo”, that is, he got nervous every time he did not understand a lesson or a math problem. “He would shut up and I would say, ‘Don’t do this.’ And he did, he learned to control his frustration. ‘ Josecito, as his family called him, was named to the honor roll for the first time the day he was assassinated.
And who could forget Jayce Luevanos? He was the popular class clown who remembered Mr. Reyes the extravagant character from the film Ace Ventura played by Jim Carrey. Jayce liked to wear a T-shirt with the image of an ice chest that said, “I’m a little cooler than you.”
One recent afternoon, Mr. Reyes sat next to a blue folk cross given to him by Tess Mata’s mother, one of the victims, and a block of granite engraved with photos of all the victims. A cousin, Belinda Aguilera, happened to see him. “It’s better, thank God,” Ms. Aguilera said as she studied Mr. Reyes, who was sitting alone on a couch.
Ms. Aguilera, who lives near the school, said she was one of the people who called Mr. Kings panicked after hearing several shots. “You came to my mind because I knew you were there,” she told him, holding back tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I feel like my phone call made him do this with you.”
No, no, said Mr. Reyes, trying to reassure her at a time when virtually everyone has lost security. That’s not up to you, he said.
She didn’t seem convinced. He talked about the long road ahead. Not just wound healing, but everything else. “The pain will never go away,” he said.