The Texas town of Uvalde, in the United States, begins burying the 21 children and teachers who were killed in a shooting at an elementary school a week ago, with two funerals scheduled for Tuesday for two 10-year-old girls.
According to obituaries on the websites of both Uvalde’s funeral homes, Amerie Jo Garza was sweet, sassy, and funny, and loved to swim and draw; Maite Yuleana Rodriguez was a student who enjoyed learning about whales and dolphins and dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. Amerie’s funeral was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Uvalde and Maite in the evening at a funeral home in town.
They were killed along with 17 other students, all between the ages of 9 and 11, and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman who broke into a fourth-grade classroom and opened fire with an AR-15 high-velocity semi-automatic rifle.
On Monday, artists finished a mural of white doves on the side of the Ace Bail Bonds building near the cemetery.
“Those children were full of life and dreams,” said one of the artists, Yanira Castillo, 34, who has lived her entire life in Uvalde. “A city doesn’t get over that. It will affect us forever.”
A series of funerals are scheduled for the next two weeks in the city of 16,000, which is nearly 80% Latino or Hispanic and largely Catholic. Among them are the funerals of the two teachers who died, Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia, 48.
Irma’s husband, José Garcia, 50, died of a heart attack two days after the attack. A joint funeral is planned for Wednesday for the couple, who met in high school and had four children.
“Our focus on Tuesday is on our families who have lost loved ones. We have begun to bury our children, the innocent victims of last week’s murders at Robb Elementary School,” Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in a statement.
As the city grieves, the country is again debating whether to reform gun laws, which in Texas allowed the gunman to legally purchase an AR-15-style gun on his 18th birthday, a week before the massacre.
Source: CNN Brasil
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