Meanwhile, families and friends have begun to bury their loved ones, and the community is still struggling. In the sun-drenched town square of Uvalde, a fountain in the park is the centerpiece of a growing memorial in honor of the lost.
Hundreds of bouquets of flowers surround the fountain, stacked next to toys, stuffed animals, candles and letters in memory of the 21 murders. Framed posters show smiling faces, leaning against walls covered with drawn hearts and names written in chalk. On a path leading to the square, visitors pass slowly in front of a row of crosses, stopping to pray or reflect on the devastating tragedy. Each cross, a few meters high and covered with flowers, balloons and messages of remembrance, bears the name of someone killed. Ryan Ramirez, Alithia Ramirez’s father, said he waited almost 12 hours before learning she was murdered. He described his 10-year-old daughter as “very kind and friendly”.
“She was there for anyone who needed anything. And that was something we all liked about her,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
Alithia “liked to draw,” her father said, and when she met with President Joe Biden during her visit to Uvalde on Sunday, Biden told her she would exhibit one of Alithia’s drawings at the White House.
She “always had a pencil in her hand, she just went to town,” Ramirez said.
The massacre ended Robb Elementary’s school year a few days earlier, and students and staff will “not return” to that campus, the district superintendent said Wednesday. Superintendent Hal Harrell’s statement did not detail the future of the building; A state senator has suggested the school could be razed. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday called on the state’s lieutenant governor and state House spokesman to convene special legislative commissions to make “legislative recommendations on school safety, mental health, social media, police training ., security of firearms and more “.
Abbott also led the Texas School Safety Center, an official research center at Texas State University, to conduct “comprehensive school safety reviews” and ensure that all school district safety and security committees meet. before the new academic year to discuss needs, review procedures and ensure all appropriate staff is trained on security procedures, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
The governor said the center must submit a progress report before October 1st.
Three people injured by the gunman were hospitalized on Tuesday at San Antonio University Hospital. The gunman’s 66-year-old grandmother, who was shot in the face before the school attack, is in good condition; a 9-year-old girl is in good condition; and a 10-year-old girl is in serious condition, the hospital said.
The school police chief says he is in contact with authorities
Meanwhile, the school district police chief in Uvalde, who was the commander of the incident during the shooting, told CNN on Wednesday exclusively that he is in daily contact with the Texas Department of Public Safety, but denied to answer more questions about the massacre. Pedro “Pete” Arredondo has been criticized. for the decision to have agents placed in the hallway outside the classrooms where the shooting took place, waiting more than an hour to intervene before a Border Patrol tactical team entered the room and killed the gunman.
When asked about reports that he was not cooperating with DPS, Arredondo told CNN, “I’m in touch with DPS every day.” Arredondo was wearing a badge and a pistol when he spoke to CNN outside his home in Uvalde.
In a separate interview with CNN outside his office, Arredondo said Wednesday that he will not give any information while the funerals are taking place.
“We will be respectful to the family,” he said. “In the end we will. When this is done and families stop suffering, we will, obviously.”
This is the first time that Arredondo has publicly commented on two brief statements on the day of the attack, in which he said the gunman was dead, but gave little information about the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation and not answered no questions.
On Tuesday, DPS said Arredondo had not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers, who are investigating the shooting.
The school’s police department and the UValde police department are “still cooperating,” said Considine, a spokesman for the department.
Once the Rangers report on the massacre is completed, Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Busbee will review it and “see if there are any criminal charges to be filed,” she said Wednesday in CNN.
McCraw, the DPS principal, said last week that the person who made the decision not to violate the classroom at Uvalde Elementary School was the school district’s police chief, calling the decision ” wrong “not to engage the gunman first.
Arredondo had completed active-duty law enforcement training at the school in December 2021, according to his CNN vocational training file. Prior to that, he had also completed two more active shooter workouts in 2020 and 2019, according to the file.
Meanwhile, Texas’ largest police union has called for its members to “cooperate fully with all official government investigations into actions related to law enforcement’s response to the massacre in Uvalde.”
Texas Combined Law Enforcement Associations will refrain from commenting on the details of the investigation, out of respect for families and the investigation process, it said in a press release. But he noted that “there has been a lot of false and misleading information after this tragedy.”
“Some of the information came from the highest levels of government and law enforcement. Sources that Texans once saw as iron and completely reliable have now been proven false,” the union statement said. “This false information has exacerbated misinformed speculation which in turn has created a fire of unreliability in finding the truth.”
The Justice Department announced on Sunday that it will conduct a review of law enforcement response to the shooting at the request of the mayor. Arredondo spoke to CNN a day after being sworn in as a city council member after being elected to office last month.
On Tuesday, new city council members went to City Hall “at their convenience” to swear, said Ubalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. No formal ceremony was held “out of respect for the families who buried their children today and who plan to bury their children in the coming days,” McLaughlin said.
The mayor had said on Monday that a special council meeting at which the new members were to be sworn in “would not take place as planned”, adding that “our focus on Tuesday is on our families who go to lose loved ones “.
Arredondo’s swearing in Tuesday night was “a private matter” out of respect for families, he told CNN outside his home on Wednesday, adding that families are the focus right now.
A posthumous award for a student
As the community weeps, more details are emerging about how those inside responded to the terror. Robb Elementary educator Nicole Ogburn had just lit a movie for her students when she saw someone carrying a gun outside her classroom window, she said. , like, I looked out the window and saw this guy with a gun approaching. And I just told my class, “Get on the floor, get on the floor, get around the corner,” Ogburn told CNN KABB / WOAI affiliates. .
“I just heard gunfire and kept praying, ‘My God, please don’t let him into my room, please don’t let him into this room,’ and for some reason, he didn’t “.
Several phone calls were made to 911 from classrooms where the gunman unleashed his deadly attack, with children asking police to intervene, a timeline provided by the state DPS revealed. Amerie Jo Garza, a 10-year-old student killed in the shooting, had tried to use her phone during the shooting to call authorities, her family said earlier. This week, she was posthumously awarded a Bronze Cross, “one of the highest honors in Girl Scouting,” the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas announced in a statement Tuesday.
“Amerie did everything she could to save the lives of her classmates and teachers,” the statement said. “We will always carry his story with us and ensure that his courageous actions will last for generations.”
There are more resources coming in, the state says
As shared trauma sets in, Texas officials are also working to address the needs on the ground, they said. To speed up the allocation of state and local resources, Abbott on Tuesday declared a state of disaster for Uvalde, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
“The disaster declaration will speed up all available state and local resources to help the Uvalde community, as well as suspend regulations that would prevent, hinder or delay the actions needed to deal with the consequences of the tragic shooting,” the statement said. .
“The Uvalde community has been devastated by last week’s senseless act of violence at Robb Elementary School and should have no difficulty receiving the support needed to heal,” Abbott said.
Other aid has come for out-of-town volunteer service events.
Patrick Johnson, 58, was so affected by the pain after learning of the seven-hour drive from Harleton, Texas to Uvalde, filling his trunk with a Walmart children’s toy to faint. in the town square, he told CNN.
For three days, the children were invited to choose any toy they liked from a table full of stuffed animals, miniature cars, and soccer balls.
“When you lose something, especially when you were a kid, you need something else to hold on to,” Johnson said. “It brings joy to children, so it brings me joy.”
Andy Rose, Aaron Cooper, Shimon Prokupecz, Omar Jimenez, Eric Levenson, Christina Maxouris, Amanda Watts, Mark Morales, Rebekah Riess, Alaa Elassar, Raja Razek, Joe Sutton, Jeremy Grisham and Virginia Langmaid of CNN contributed to this report.