Fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia was killed Tuesday in her Texas class, massacred along with her classmate and 19 students. Two days later, a family member says that her husband, with a broken heart, died.
The cause of the massacre, the deadliest school shooting in the country from Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago, continued under investigation, and authorities said the 18-year-old gunman had no criminal or mental health record. known.
The alleged shooter, Salvador Ramos, was in the Robb d’Uvalde primary school classroom for more than an hour before he died in a shooting, authorities said on Thursday.
The commotion has shaken a country that is already recovering from armed violence, and the number has continued to rise in Uvalde, a predominantly Latin city of about 16,000 people about 120 kilometers from the border with Mexico.
Joe Garcia, 50, had laid flowers at his wife’s memorial site Thursday morning, The New York Times reported. “He almost fell” after returning home and died of a heart attack, his nephew John Martinez told the newspaper.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Rushing-Estes-Knowles Funeral Home confirmed Joe Garcia’s death to The Associated Press. AP was unable to contact Garcia family members independently on Thursday.
Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller will hold a Mass Thursday evening at the Sacred Heart of Uvalde Church for the Garcia family and the community at large, the archdiocese said.
Married for 24 years, the couple shared four children. The eldest, Cristian, is serving in the Marine Corps, as his brother, Jose, attended Texas State University. Her eldest daughter Lyliana is a high school sophomore, while her younger sister is a seventh grader.
Martinez, Garcia’s nephew, told The Detroit Free Press that the family was struggling to understand that while Garcia’s son was training for combat, it was his mother who was shot dead.
“Things like this shouldn’t happen in schools,” he told the newspaper. “It’s bad. It’s not good.”
The Garcias loved to have a barbecue, Irma, 48, wrote in an online letter to her Robb Elementary students. Irma enjoyed listening to music and taking rural cruises to Concan, a community along the Cold River about 25 miles (40.23 kilometers) north of Uvalde.
The school year, scheduled to end on Thursday, was Irma’s 23rd year of teaching, all at Robb Elementary School. She had previously been named School of the Year Teacher and received the Trinity Award for Excellence in Education in 2019 from Trinity University.
“Mrs. Irma Garcia was my mentor when I started teaching,” wrote her classmate Allison McCullough when Irma was named Teacher of the Year. “The wealth of knowledge and patience he showed me changed my life.”
For five years, Irma had collaborated with Eva Mireles, who was also killed.
“Welcome to 4th grade! We have a wonderful year ahead of us! ” Mireles wrote in an online letter to his incoming students last year.
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Associated Press journalist Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed.