Stefanie Dazio, The Associated Press Published Thursday, May 26, 2022 8:42 PM EDT Last Updated on Thursday, May 26, 2022 10:55 PM EDT
Irma Garcia’s family was already suffering from her death in the Texas school shooting that targeted her fourth-grade classroom and killed her classmate and 19 students.
Then, just two days after the attack, her grieving husband collapsed and died at home from a heart attack, a family member said.
Joe Garcia, 50, left flowers at his wife’s memorial site Thursday morning in Uvalde, Texas, and returned home, where he “almost just fell” and died, his nephew John Martinez told The New York Times.
Married for 24 years, the couple had four children.
Martinez told The Detroit Free Press that the family was struggling to understand that while the couple’s eldest son was training for combat in the Marine Corps, it was his mother who was shot dead.
“Things like this shouldn’t happen in schools,” he 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.
The cause of the massacre, the deadliest school shooting in the country since the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut, has continued under investigation, and authorities said the 18-year-old gunman had no criminal or health record. mentally known.
The fury shook a country already tired of armed violence and shattered the community of Uvalde, a predominantly Latin city of about 16,000 people about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with Mexico.
The Garcias loved to barbecue, Irma, 48, wrote in an online letter to her students at Robb Elementary School. Irma enjoyed listening to music and traveling to Concan, a community along the Cold River about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Uvalde.
The couple’s eldest son, Cristian, is a sailor. The couple’s other son, Jose, is attending Texas State University. Her eldest daughter, Lyliana, is a high school sophomore, while her younger sister is in seventh grade.
The school year, scheduled to end on Thursday, was Irma’s 23rd year of teaching, all in Robb. She was previously named the school’s teacher of the year 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 colleague 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 collaborated with Eva Mireles, who was also killed.
The suspect, Salvador Ramos, was in the classroom for more than an hour before being killed in a shootout with law enforcement, authorities said.
“Welcome to 4th grade! We have a wonderful year ahead of us! ” Mireles wrote last year in an online letter to incoming students.
Associated Press journalist Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.