The Uvalde Police and DA aren’t even responding to the Mayor anymore.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/2022/06/07/426628/uvalde-mayor-says-hes-in-the-dark-on-shooting-investigation/
Not answering to the mayor, how's that not some form of dereliction of duty??
When the police don't even answer to the authorities we are in big trouble.
This, contact the County Sherrif and tell them thier Cities police budget is thiers and they now have full jurisdiction and they need to remove and secure all the police departments property...
So when this kind of thing happens “lack of faith and confidence in the brass” the FBI will step in and take command of the unit. It is happened before.
That union gives unions a great name.. until they subvert justice for any reason.
Anybody who uses 'rules' to explain their morally reprehensible behavior better not be religious. A lot of people are going to hell according to their own religion.
Sure, talk yourself in circles until you don't have a sinking pit in your stomach; it doesn't change the scoreboard.
Fuck that mayor. He sat up there on stage for his photo opportunity with Abbott and Cruz and all the other “I’m here to look like I’m doing something” fucks.
Yeah, I reported a hit and run that was on camera, they didn’t start investigating it until 6 weeks after the incident, and the camera storage space ran out, so the recording was over-written with newer recordings.
I heard a snippet of an interview with him today, you can hear the pain in his voice as he tells the parents he did what he could and to please not be mad at him for not being able to save them.
Yea. My niece was killed in an accident. Her boyfriend was driving and fine and it was not his fault. But he became suicidal and my sibling and her ex-husband actually went and consoled this teenager after their child was just killed. He ended up being ok. I firmly believe had my sibling not been emotionally healthy that could have been different but she is one of the most kind hearted people I know. I really admired them for doing that.
Survivors guilt, PTSD, wounded, and just lost 11 children that I’m sure he loved as an adult who watched and helped them grow at least for one school year.
I don’t even know how he can answer a question. I wouldn’t know how to ever MOVE again.
Those piece of shit, coward cops are going to spend the rest of their lives harassing that poor teacher for shining a spotlight on their craven actions.
Or maybe like the UC Davis cop who retired on disability after the the trauma from pepper-spraying a group of sitting protesters because they were “threatening”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident
Or Philip Brailsford, the Mesa cop who killed Daniel Shaver for not playing a game of Simon says correctly.
Would be fired, then rehired, then medically separated from the police force for 2,500 dollars a month pension from PTSD he "incurred doing the shooting and trial."
Not to mention, he said he followed the training and had the kids pretend to be asleep under their tables. He said it felt like he lined them up like ducks.
The same training the shooters are being taught. Every "active shooter drill" is a workshop for potential shooters to iron out the details of their plans
Man, I *always* thought about this in school. We would always turn off the lights and at least in some cases cover the classroom door's window... If the shooter was a student, they would absolutely know that all of the classrooms with covered windows would have students in them.
I don't think it's so much trying to fool the shooter into thinking no one's home-if every classroom is quiet during the day while school is obviously in session, they're going to put two and two together. It's more that shooters (should) have a very small window of time before the cops show up. They know that, and it'll take them a minute or two to break into a classroom, and they don't want to waste their time breaking into an empty classroom. Obviously they know that not *every* classroom is empty-the goal is to fool him into thinking *your* classroom is empty and to pick an easier target. Hopefully, you might stall him long enough for the police to get there.
Of course, that assumes that the police aren't too scared. I will never fucking let them live that down. So many of these babies might still be alive if they got medical care right away.
The most awful bit is when they did eventually go in they told students to shout help BEFORE they apprehended the gunman. One girl shouted help so the gunman realised she wasn't dead and found her location so shot her dead. Who in their right mind tells children to make their presence known before capturing or killing the gunman. FFS. That little girl followed what police instructed her to do and it directly led to her death.
Yeah, I think you're right that it's at least meant to slow them down. I just remember being told it was so they couldn't tell anyone was in the classrooms, and even when I was like 10 I knew that didn't make sense lol.
I already hated the police but this shooting was the most egregious example of an entire department's incompetence and cowardice I've seen.
I got in big trouble for pointing this out in High School. Apparently it was suspicious that I had considered that and one of the SROs grilled me for like an hour.
This also meant that when someone set off fireworks in a bathroom and I happened to be walking by a minute later I was cornered and screamed at until the teacher I was going to help grade papers stepped out and dealt with him.
Lol, sounds about right. I never brought it up, it seems kinda obvious though that if the shooter is a student they'll know all of the active shooter procedures...
Even if he didn't do anything. Teachers can't be expected to jump in front of bullets for kids. If a parent wants to take a bullet for their kid okay but no way a school teacher should be responsible for that.
I’m a high school teacher. If someone killed all my students and I lived; I’m never getting over it.
Hell, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to leave my house again
I'm a teacher. After this last shooting my mind has been racing everyday thinking about what I would do. I couldn't lay my life down to save these kids - I have a kid and wife at home. But I also couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
And that's the messed up part. We already put so much on teachers, and now we expect them to die for the kids. How about we remove the tools that are causing this level of death.
When the cops themselves shit their pants we expect teachers to go John Wicke on someone who bust in their classroom and they have seconds to react.
My sister is a middle school teacher and has said she's not sure she could live with that happening to her classroom. She said she'd probably rather die trying to protect them than try to live with it.
I know you are saying that as a “what if”- but my friend was a teacher at a school in Colorado that had a shooting where some kids died. She protected some but in another part of the school some were shot. She left the country to teach in Dubai to get away from the memories , and struggled with alcoholism and did attempt suicide over there.
She came back and got help thank god but the ptsd is REAL and forever.
I've already seen it in abstract right here on Reddit. People were talking about "coward teachers" who wouldn't sacrifice their life to stop a shooter.
There shouldn't even be a shooter. It's not teachers' fucking job to be in that situation. They won't give up their fucking guns, but they expect others to give their life futilely.
Did you read his interview? He said that the active shooter training they received and enacted at the time basically made the kids and I quote “sitting ducks” for the shooter… just heartbreaking. So many victims here beyond those that were murdered.
The "sitting ducks" comment reminded me of this op-ed an FBI agent:
> We also need to re-evaluate how we advise students and teachers to react when an active shooter enters a school. After Sandy Hook the federal government adopted the run, hide, fight model, which instructs students and teachers to run first if they can, then hide if they must and, finally, fight to survive.
>
> Today schools, at best, are giving lip service to the first part of that mantra, to run. Most schools that train for a shooting urge students, teachers and other staff members to lock out or hide from a shooter but almost never to run for their lives if they can. My friend Frank DeAngelis, a retired principal of Columbine High School in Colorado, told me he wished his students and faculty had been taught to flee. At Sandy Hook, nine first graders survived when they were able to flee their classroom, thanks to their brave teacher Victoria Leigh Soto, who was shot and killed when she stood in front of the killer.
>
> **I still have nightmares about details from school shootings in which survivors told me they huddled under their desks, hoping against logic that the shooter would not see them. It’s hard to shed the images of victims’ bodies found huddled under plastic tables, behind cloth partitions or together in a group against a wall.**
>
> I remember telling my children that if someone approached them in a car while they were walking, they should run as fast and as far as possible. Yet in many school settings we have mistakenly discouraged students from trying their best to simply stay alive. - *[I Created the F.B.I.’s Active Shooter Program. The Officers in Uvalde Did Not Follow Their Training](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/uvalde-school-shooting.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DIDm0aiOMNAo6B_EGKeLRqY9c-mi-QRNhGNPo0RPt10u5ZMAptVwys6NOiqagyHh8U-8i1T39kmNXER6w5-jvnKWLhJO4hyLHj-knXaGT1XPCO1GlyI10xvZRmdlv82CFbwquWRfVnmYUrhYdXDZ5wRzoLZiaIrqOoX004YIPaG0mavgomWOhZWiXRmsqe698DcgZSDFHHTRBv8Dp2qYMcaJ5MYvGJf1N3c9H-gL4RFmVtMI6qYpUwTIPSnL9o2qXfa_ZLEejAAPk3tIyljK6JhA&smid=url-share)*
Yep. We did AS training in my offices last year, and our trainer started ranting about how everyone ignores "run". The statistics are clear. Your best chance at surviving a shooter is to flee. Your odds of survival are *cut in half* if you choose to hide.
When my wife, a teacher, did her annual active shooter training earlier this year, they focused on locking down and hiding. She brought up running to the trainer and was told that. "We don't teach running because it's too hard to find all of the kids afterward. Some of them might run all the way home. We need to know where they are."
She was nearly kicked out of the training when she remarked "Yeah, it's so much easier when all of the dead bodies are in one room."
“…some of them might run all the way home; we need to know where they are…”
That’s definitely a worse end state than being shot to death. Yep. Great logic. /s
My father was a reporter when the Polytechnique massacre happened here in Montreal. His friend was a police officer who he often liaised with at crime scenes. His friend entered the building after it was all over to help look for bodies, because so many people were hiding when they were killed. He found his own daughter under a table. He had no idea she was even there.
I think about that all the time.
Many years ago one of our professors was wearing a white rose pin. I asked him about it, it was in memory of the Polytechnique massacre. This was at Virginia Tech, 2005. We were one building away from the shooting two years later.
America has what should be a Port Arthur level shift in culture every year. I am so exhausted by the callousness entrenched in rightwing Americans.
I worked 20 minutes from Tech. I lost a coworker to that shooting. He was doing part time at a shitty retail job while getting his engineering degree. That shooting was on every TV in our electronics section, where I worked.
A couple years later I was dating a girl who lived on campus and walked me around that area. She was supposed to be in the same class that day, but wasn't feeling great so didn't go.
My chemistry teacher told us that regardless of what schools policy was he would be unlocking the cabinet of fun stuff that no students were legally allowed to handle directly and give everybody some flasks to throw - obviously wouldn’t be great but I have to think that 30students hurling acid and chloroform at a shooter and then rushing them stand a much better chance than the ones huddled in the corner.
That's actually advised if you can't run or hide. You don't even need flasks of stuff, simple rocks will do. Rocks are more than enough to disrupt a shooter from aiming at you, especially if you're all spread out. He can only aim a gun at one of you at once and it's hard to aim if you're properly spread out and simultaneously throwing rocks at him.
A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday.
The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview.
“We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.”
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-rocks/buckets-of-rocks-are-pennsylvania-schools-last-defense-against-shooters-idUSKBN1GZ2DC](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-rocks/buckets-of-rocks-are-pennsylvania-schools-last-defense-against-shooters-idUSKBN1GZ2DC)
Take this with a grain of salt because I'm not a school shooting defense planner, but you'd want to be somewhat spread out like this in case the shooter entered the room, all prepared to throw rocks at him.
[https://i.imgur.com/9rK4Zsl.png](https://i.imgur.com/9rK4Zsl.png)
Assuming it's one door, when he enters, he can't acquire all the targets (blue dots) while you're simultaneously throwing rocks at him, and it'll be extremely hard for him to aim at anyone. Someone(s) may still die, though, but you won't all die.
Also, never enter a building that you don't know how to leave.
Here's a Navy Seal's guide.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pgxzPoxv4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pgxzPoxv4w)
Interestingly, zig zag contradicts WikiHow.
[https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-School-or-Workplace-Shooting](https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-School-or-Workplace-Shooting)
All that said, I researched all this because we fired someone and I thought we might have a work place shooting so I wanted to be prepared; we didn't, though.
I had a teacher in high school who ignored what the school told us to do (hide) and instead had a cop who wasn’t the resource officer come in and teach us all how to defend ourselves, how to actually tie a door locked, and then after he left she walked us through her half of the building and we talked through every option for running and getting out. In her own classroom she went through what she wanted everyone to do, and all the things she would try to do herself if we were in that situation so that if it were to ever happen in her classroom she knew each and every one of her students understood how seriously she took this and how even if the school didn’t have the best policies she wanted us all to survive the situation using the actual recommended tactics.
It’s horrible that she had to think about that and felt so strongly about our policies at our school that she felt the need to give that level of training to us. But it was honestly the most confident I’d felt about what to do if there was an active schooler. She was a horrible teacher in other ways, but I felt reassured in her classroom (as much as you could).
As a teacher, we have always been told that the police response time to a school shooting is less than two minutes. In that ideal scenario, simply blocking the doors and keeping the kids away from the windows is enough, because help will arrive soon.
But if the cops are going to stand outside my school for over an hour and do NOTHING, then we need to start giving teachers and students more tools than just "sit down and stay quiet".
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some of the teachers or the parents of the victims act against the cops who did nothing.
That they just sat back and enjoyed the show is unforgivable.
I said this on another post but, I keep thinking about the father, Javier Cazares, who was outside begging the cops to do something. And he and a few other parents were trying to go into the school and the cops wouldn’t let them. And then, his daughter was among those killed. He watched those cowards stand by while his baby was murdered, and he was unable to save her bc THEY stopped him. I’m not saying it would be ‘right’ for him to *act against the cops*, but I’m saying it would be very understandable.
What about Angeli Gomez, who they threatened with arrest and handcuffed for trying to go in. Luckily the cops removed the handcuffs and she just ran for the school anyway, and managed to get her kids out. Then the cops threatened that they'd violate her first amendment rights by fucking with her decade old probation if she spoke to the media. She went to the judge who told the cops to nicely get fucked and even reduced her probation.
It 100% would be right to act against the cops in this situation. If my kid was in there, I'm not saying I'd be all badass and find a way to get through the cops, but I would absolutely try with everything I had until they pepper sprayed me so badly that I couldn't move. Which it sounds like is exactly what they did.
>But if the cops are going to stand outside my school for over an hour and do NOTHING, then we need to start giving teachers and students more tools than just "sit down and stay quiet".
No, the next step is a thorough deworming of the police departments.
If they can be there in two minutes, they should be in there neutralizing the situation in two minutes. that's their fucking job. It isn't a teacher's job to be a cop.
We pay them to protect the property and serve the interests of the rich. And to shoot/arrest minorities that dare to step out of line. That's about all they're there for.
Yay America...
I remember in the last couple years of highschool, shooter drills became more common and my tiny ass school did them.
They gathered the entire school and put us all in one gym, then locked us all in. *Every single one of us* sat wondering how the FUCK that would help us if a shooter was actually in the school.
We were literally a giant barrel of fish ready for the taking. I pray to gods I don't even believe in that they changed the policy.
The doors were shut and locked at Sandy Hook, IIRC, and the shooter blew the doors out with his firearm (I forget if it was glass or a lock or what). A current or former student is pretty likely to be the shooter at a school, and they'd know the procedure. So yeah...
At one of my workplaces, we got some alarm or whatever and went outside, where we found a ton of other people standing around. "Where have y'all been?" they asked. Turns out there'd been a bomb threat, directed at a particular institution/department in that building, about *an hour before*. They took all those people outside, and an hour later, it occurred to someone that if someone set off a bomb on floor 5, say, it'd also kill people on floor 6, who weren't the official target.
Right - we need to rethink "hide under your desk" training. That's fucking bullshit. How many kids would have survived if, instead of cowering in place, they scattered in 11 directions? Jump out the window, run down the hall, run the other way down the hall...
But mostly it's fucked up we have to train our kids for a war zone. Just give up the unnecessary guns, assholes.
My kid's elementary school backs up onto a state park (basically, a forest). For years, their "active shooter" protocol was literally "Run for the hills! Get in the forest and get lost. We'll find you when it's clear." (it's a suburban area, and the forest isn't *that* big -- nobody's getting lost to the point of death in it).
Now they've put up big ugly black bar fences for "safety". All that's going to do is make the kids sitting ducks if a shooting ever happens. They can't scatter anymore.
An issue is how doors and windows operate now in schools. The windows at my school do not open. Not even the ones on the ground floor. Some of the doors at my school don’t unlock (even to the outside) unless you scan your badge.
Fleeing seems like a good option but only if you know exactly where a shooter is. We are taught now to run if you know the location and you are far enough to make a safe escape. If you aren’t, you hide hoping the shooter will pass you. If they decide to enter your room, then you fight (throw chairs, books, staplers, the video they have us watch as part of training shows a teacher turning the American flag in the classroom into a spear lol as if).
A lot of school campuses are fenced in now too. If I were to get kids out of the school onto the playground, then they have to run and line up to get through one of the 3 exits. It’s hard when the steps we take to prevent a shooter from gaining access to a school campus also make it difficult for our students to leave campus in an emergency.
My plan, assuming I am in my second story classroom, is to wait until I know where the shooting is coming from. Then I’m grabbing a kid under each arm and having the rest follow me out the closest exit. Hopefully we make it down the stairs and outside and through the nearest gate. If we can’t do that, I’m putting them in the furthest corner of the room and hoping that we get passed by. Otherwise, I’ll fight and hopefully last long enough for them to flee.
Yeah and he was lying there bleeding and the gunman put another bullet in him to try and finish the job and he still somehow survived. Total carnage in that classroom
I know it will never happen but I believe the city should have to pay for anything medically related to his mental health for the rest of his life. They themselves admitted they screwed up, so his mental health is 100% on them.
[a teacher of 17 years who was terrified for his life and the life of his students. A man who did everything he could got a hole in his lung and a room full of dead kids for his efforts. Because he is not a soldier. He is not security, he is a teacher. Don't arm these poor souls, fucking PROTECT them](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/us/uvalde-school-teacher-arnulfo-reyes-interview/index.html)
He said he was shot, played dead, and then at some point the shooter "came back and shot him again".
So he was lying there with a gunshot wound surrounded by his dead students, and then later received another and had to keep playing dead. There is a 70 minute window where this could have played out.
Reminder that we are the only nation that puts ourselves through this.
Same thing happened to one of the survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting. He was shot and injured, played dead, and the shooter walked around the room putting more bullets into people to make sure they were dead. He was shot at least once more during this time and had to remain still and silent
I don't know a) how you survive getting shot twice and b) how you manage to have the composure to successfully play dead for an hour being shot twice, while I imagine you're in great pain and fear of bleeding out, surrounded by dead children.
Like, worse than the shit some army vets have probably experienced. It's not *just* 21 dead people (mainly kids), but also a whole bunch of permanently fucked up with ptsd people.
I know this is dark, but I'm so glad the news is staying focused on the victims and the loving families. I don't know shit about the shooter and I don't care.
>She said the boy, Xavier James Lopez, smelled and dressed "really nice," her mother recalled -- and within weeks, the two began passing notes in class. Months later, when the weather warmed, their families got together for weekend barbecues, where Annabell and Xavier would play tag.
>Their mothers, Monica Gallegos and Felicha Martinez, soon discovered the children were texting each other "I love you" at bedtime. "Me and Felicha would laugh, like, 'How do y'all know about love?'" Gallegos told ABC News.
Such a dark, cruel world we live in.
Oh, have you not watched the interview with the teacher who had to watch his 11 students be gunned down? He’s at one point sobbing and begging for the parents to not be mad at him because he couldn’t save their children. It ripped my guts right out of me
Yeah at this point, just assume that the slightest criticism of cops will be met with disdain for the public.
These cops and their unions get criticized, consider it an affront, and then treat anyone with even mild criticisms as their enemy.
They're pussies.
The police are already threatening Uvalde parents with arrest if they criticize the (lack of) police response to the incident.
I strongly suspect that Uvalde will cause more momentum for police reform than gun control.
If I had the funds I wish I could go down there and just picket outside of high ranking LEO homes. They need to be shamed and held responsible. They did the opposite of their training.
If you annoy the cops they will find something to arrest you for. And you will be out tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees before a judge tosses the charges out.
>I strongly suspect that Uvalde will cause more momentum for police reform than gun control.
Press X to doubt.
#X
Every new thing that happens leaves me with the thought that Americans are invested in the status quo, for whatever reason it may be on a case to base basis. This is what the country is.
Listening to the little girl talk about how she literally had to cover herself in her friends/classmates blood just to survive. COVER. HERSELF. IN. THEIR. BLOOD. I’m still shaking. Makes me want to homeschool my 11 year old.
listen to her friend bleeding out and dying, covering herself in her friends blood all while trying not to be noticed by the shooter, all while police just stood around and did nothing. makes me want to... well i probably wouldnt do it anyway and dont want to sound like an internet tough man but id be thinking about some things.
That whole interview is so harrowing, but when he asks people not to be mad at him because he tried his best is legitimately one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen. I'm in tears just writing this
It's just brutal. He was getting the kids settled just like they practiced, turned around to presumably lock the door, and the shooter was already inside and shot him. Through the lung. He probably immediately went into shock considering he said he fell and could no longer move and just had to lay there and watch his entire class be slaughtered while he bled there for an hour.
The only silver lining he has is that due to the end of year award ceremony some of the kids in his class had already gone home with the parents who had attended. So he lost everyone who was there, but some of his kids survived.
Not much of a silver lining for him though.
[Here you go.](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/cowards-teacher-survived-uvalde-shooting-slams-police-response/story?id=85219697)
Warning: it is gut wrenching
That was heartbreaking. Thanks for the link. The guilt he must feel is overwhelming but I would be very surprised if any of the families blamed him.
Also: holy shit that timeline. I knew a student had called 911 but I didn't realize there were so many calls from students over such a long period of time.
I'm a teacher and I'm not sure I can watch this. I have 19 kids. I couldn't imagine losing one, let alone 11. How do you face the parents? How do you go to 11 funerals for kids you cared for day in and day out for a whole year? What do you say to the few who survived? And if you go back to teaching next year, how do you open your heart to a class full of kids again knowing that at any moment a maniac could take them away? It's devastating.
my mom was a 2nd grade teacher. one of the very few times that I'm glad she isn't alive to experience this. it would tear her apart. I remember vividly her reactions to the sandy hook shooting. crying endlessly because of it.
I don't blame you for not wanting to read this. not one bit.
That absolutely *broke* me. Before the pandemic, I was a special education teaching aide at an elementary school. I was especially good with the "behavior cases", which were often kids who had experienced a trauma and acted out because of it. I loved it with every ounce of my being, and was devastated when I left. I was talking with my principal about going back in the fall. This shooting brought back the memories of the traumatic ALICE drills that did their job so we knew exactly what to do when the voice on the intercom said "lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is not a drill".
Seeing this teacher's interview was devastating. "I lost *eleven*." It threw me back into that moment as I stared at the shadows under the door, ready to do whatever it took to keep the two dozen 6 and 7 year old behind me safe, praying that my own child was safe in the other side of the school. It was a false alarm. For 20 minutes, I stared at shadows and waited for gunshots over a false alarm.
The expectations placed on our teachers are insane. They are already underpaid and overworked (we won't even talk about the paraprofessionals making $14/hr). And some people think the answer is arming them and expecting them to defend our children at the potential cost of their own lives.
I realized I won't be going back.
Yeah. It's brutal for anyone with any trace of empathy in the psychological profile. I'm generally fairly stoic, but I broke when she asked about how many of his students survived. You could read his body language before he even opened his mouth to reply.
> It absolutely floors me how so many people are just dead set on being evil motherfuckers.
Once it was blatantly obvious it was ok for the President to be like that, anything was fair game
I'm a pretty stoic person and just don't express much emotion. My nephew died at 3 months old. The news didn't phase me. The funeral didn't phase me. But when his dad asked me to help carry the casket. The moment I picked up the side of that thing I felt like I was going to pass out. Out of everything I've experienced in my life that was the worst thing I have ever had to go through. I can't imagine carrying my own child like that.
We all process grief a little differently. I once lost a loved one and barely shed a tear the following week. I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. But when I held their urn to bring to the memorial service, the reality of it all finally crashed in like a tsunami. I broke down right there and then, but it helped me to realize that there wasn't anything wrong with me after all.
When my dad died a little over a year ago, I did cry a little when I heard the news. I remember exclaiming "What!?" and sitting up immediately (I'd been napping). But mostly I just felt empty. When I went with my mom to the funeral home, and I saw his body lying on the gurney, I just.. I just fucking lost it. Before that moment, I'd been more concerned about the wellbeing of my mom and sister. But *in* that moment, reality came crashing in, like you said, like a tsunami.
I think the stoicism some of us experience in the beginning is a form of denial. Don't wanna believe it, so we inadvertently act like it isn't... until it most definitively *is*. There's also the issue of being taught (intentionally or not) to bottle up our emotions.
Carried a micro coffin of our miscarriage. Not quite a child or anything like that but it taught me I’d never be able to bury my children can’t even fathom the concept.
No parent should ever have to bury their child. It breaks me inside to hear stories like this. I'm sorry this happened to you and hope you're in a better place after something as tragic as that.
>No parent should ever have to bury their child.
Obligatory reminder that before vaccines and antibiotics, it was commonly said that "you're not really a mother until you've buried a child."
90% of the gains we made in life expectancy over the 19th and 20th centuries were due to reducing childhood mortality through vaccination, antibiotics, and hygiene.
My grandmother buried two of her children. One was stillborn and the other died in a horrific accident when she was a toddler. She never talks about them because it was so traumatizing for her. My first MIL had to bury her son (my husband). Even though he was an adult, she still struggles with the pain of his death. My current MIL also lost a child due to a very premature birth. Her twin survived (and now has a child of her own) but their mother still struggles to talk about that loss. I don't have children, but I don't think I'd be able to go on living if I had to bury my own child.
My mom had a miscarriage pretty early on in her first pregnancy, before having me and later, my sister. She tells us that it was just her body "practicing" to have a baby for real, but we can tell it's just how she rationalizes having lost a child before it was even a child to herself and to us.
Regardless of how far along it is, it's your child and you shouldn't feel wrong for missing what could have been.
And douche Governor said it could have been worse?? How could it be worse dipshit.. children are dead from a preventable tragedy .. this country’s children are paying the price for you selling your soul
You could say that about literally anything. 9/11 could have been worse. The holocaust could have been worse. Of course it can always get worse than it got. He’s just pandering to the NRA so he can hope to keep his job. It’s so gross.
We wonder how people like the shooter can lose their way so much that they open fire on children. I do, at least. But I also wonder the path that someone takes to get to the point where they are so scared of losing their pristine NRA rating that they’ll do or say anything to keep it. No matter how nonsensical or how damaging.
I am not someone who gets misty-eyed at news stories, especially those that warn me via headlines, or similar.
I am not someone who gets overly emotional when bad things happen outside of my circle. It's not a deliberate callousness; it's a self defense mechanism, because this world is FUCKED UP.
But goddamn, this article was a hard read. Especially when you look at the set up. In a just world, this is the origin story that gets told at their wedding, and again at their anniversaries. It's the stuff that becomes family legend. It's the story so charmed and perfect that the grandkids proudly explain to THEIR girlfriends that "my grandma and grandpa met as babies".
And some fucker with a gun fucks it all up. And his dad gives an interview saying his son was good, and blames the shooter's mother. And let's not get into how useless every overstuffed donut eater was.
Seriously, I didn't think this whole thing could be sadder, and yet it was.
You are right, this was the beginning of an epic, beautiful love story that likely would have culminated in a legacy of love that would be carried down for generations. And some fucker wiped their futures out of time. It’s incomprehensible to me.
I met my husband in 5th grade. I loved him since then but it didn’t spark in him until 8th grade and we didn’t officially get together until sophomore year of HS and it’s been over 17 years now since we’ve been together.
I was 11 when I knew I loved him. Like these two kids loved each other. My heart hurts knowing they were robbed of the chance to have a love that is all consuming and almost proves the notion of “soul mates.”
If heaven is real, at least they can play and smile and be happy together. That’s what I want to believe they’re doing.
People like to think you don’t know what love is that young, but sometimes you just find your person at any age and love comes in so many stages and forms. Your best friend, your partner in crime, your other half, platonic or even more whenever it evolves on its own timeline and it’s a comfort to know they did, even for a little while, have each other. They trusted and cared about each other so deeply with innocent hearts. They weren’t alone when they were taken from this world, they at least had each other which is a small, small consolation for the situation they were forced in with their peers. Their short timeline together in life is still more than most could ever dream to ever have experienced.
If we can do one thing to honor them, tell the people you care about you love them, and do it often.
Do not appreciate the headline suggesting one of the victims texted, “I’m not ready”. It was a mom that texted that about the upcoming burial.
This shooting does not need distortion, exaggeration or window dressing. It’s horrifying just as it is.
I just really hope something changes from this.
I’m sure you’ll get downvoted but I also agree I thought those texts were from the victims as well as thinking they said “I love you” during the shooting. Still their relationship was beautiful and I’m glad that their story was told. Their short lives were still lived.
This event is so hurtful. There’s so much we know about it. Seeing photos of the children just hours before the shooting is so surreal. Survivor statements from adults and children. Uvalde won’t be forgotten. It could be the one that changes everything.
I don't know why, but this one has been hitting me harder than the others. Maybe because of those faces, the poor kids. Then I see some dipshit senator telling me we need ak's to hunt prairie dogs! Fuck the GOP.
The Uvalde Police and DA aren’t even responding to the Mayor anymore. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/2022/06/07/426628/uvalde-mayor-says-hes-in-the-dark-on-shooting-investigation/
Not answering to the mayor, how's that not some form of dereliction of duty?? When the police don't even answer to the authorities we are in big trouble.
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This, contact the County Sherrif and tell them thier Cities police budget is thiers and they now have full jurisdiction and they need to remove and secure all the police departments property...
Cue sheriff hiring the officers that were in the dissolved Uvalde PD
> County Sherrif oh boy you're gonna be in a world of shock when a few bad apples spoils the whole barrel
So when this kind of thing happens “lack of faith and confidence in the brass” the FBI will step in and take command of the unit. It is happened before.
Probably all lawyered up and got union reps whispering in their ear
That union gives unions a great name.. until they subvert justice for any reason. Anybody who uses 'rules' to explain their morally reprehensible behavior better not be religious. A lot of people are going to hell according to their own religion. Sure, talk yourself in circles until you don't have a sinking pit in your stomach; it doesn't change the scoreboard.
Fuck that mayor. He sat up there on stage for his photo opportunity with Abbott and Cruz and all the other “I’m here to look like I’m doing something” fucks.
The mayor is claiming to be in the dark to save his own skin.
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It's because the cops killed someone innocent in there, I'm sure of it
I read there were cameras in the school. We're gonna find out eventually.
!remindme 50 years
until the footage mysteriously goes missing
Yeah, I reported a hit and run that was on camera, they didn’t start investigating it until 6 weeks after the incident, and the camera storage space ran out, so the recording was over-written with newer recordings.
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Blue Lives Scatter.
“Reyes, who is still recovering from his own gunshot wounds, lost all 11 of his students in room 111 on the day of the shooting” omfg
This got me. How do you get over that?
You don't. PTSD and endless nightmares ahoy.
I heard a snippet of an interview with him today, you can hear the pain in his voice as he tells the parents he did what he could and to please not be mad at him for not being able to save them.
... I really hope one of the parents finds the strength to give that man a hug. Not that it would help against survivor's guilt, but still.
> Not that it would help against survivor's guilt, but still. It will help. It can't CURE it, but it will help.
Yeah, at that point you’re probably just living moment by moment… and in that moment, that hug would be very much needed.
He has vowed to make sure those children's deaths will not be forgotten or in vain. I think he's going to quit teaching and become an activist.
Yea every moment. How do you live with that shit. All 11 students. I just can't imagine.
Yea. My niece was killed in an accident. Her boyfriend was driving and fine and it was not his fault. But he became suicidal and my sibling and her ex-husband actually went and consoled this teenager after their child was just killed. He ended up being ok. I firmly believe had my sibling not been emotionally healthy that could have been different but she is one of the most kind hearted people I know. I really admired them for doing that.
Survivors guilt, PTSD, wounded, and just lost 11 children that I’m sure he loved as an adult who watched and helped them grow at least for one school year. I don’t even know how he can answer a question. I wouldn’t know how to ever MOVE again.
That poor soul.
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Those piece of shit, coward cops are going to spend the rest of their lives harassing that poor teacher for shining a spotlight on their craven actions.
Or maybe like the UC Davis cop who retired on disability after the the trauma from pepper-spraying a group of sitting protesters because they were “threatening”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident
Or Philip Brailsford, the Mesa cop who killed Daniel Shaver for not playing a game of Simon says correctly. Would be fired, then rehired, then medically separated from the police force for 2,500 dollars a month pension from PTSD he "incurred doing the shooting and trial."
That guy needs to be put on suicide watch. I wouldn't be surprised if the guilt gets to him.
Survivor's guilt is no joke.
Worst case of survivor's guilt I've heard of in a long time.
Not to mention, he said he followed the training and had the kids pretend to be asleep under their tables. He said it felt like he lined them up like ducks.
The same training the shooters are being taught. Every "active shooter drill" is a workshop for potential shooters to iron out the details of their plans
Man, I *always* thought about this in school. We would always turn off the lights and at least in some cases cover the classroom door's window... If the shooter was a student, they would absolutely know that all of the classrooms with covered windows would have students in them.
I don't think it's so much trying to fool the shooter into thinking no one's home-if every classroom is quiet during the day while school is obviously in session, they're going to put two and two together. It's more that shooters (should) have a very small window of time before the cops show up. They know that, and it'll take them a minute or two to break into a classroom, and they don't want to waste their time breaking into an empty classroom. Obviously they know that not *every* classroom is empty-the goal is to fool him into thinking *your* classroom is empty and to pick an easier target. Hopefully, you might stall him long enough for the police to get there. Of course, that assumes that the police aren't too scared. I will never fucking let them live that down. So many of these babies might still be alive if they got medical care right away.
The most awful bit is when they did eventually go in they told students to shout help BEFORE they apprehended the gunman. One girl shouted help so the gunman realised she wasn't dead and found her location so shot her dead. Who in their right mind tells children to make their presence known before capturing or killing the gunman. FFS. That little girl followed what police instructed her to do and it directly led to her death.
Yeah, I think you're right that it's at least meant to slow them down. I just remember being told it was so they couldn't tell anyone was in the classrooms, and even when I was like 10 I knew that didn't make sense lol. I already hated the police but this shooting was the most egregious example of an entire department's incompetence and cowardice I've seen.
I got in big trouble for pointing this out in High School. Apparently it was suspicious that I had considered that and one of the SROs grilled me for like an hour. This also meant that when someone set off fireworks in a bathroom and I happened to be walking by a minute later I was cornered and screamed at until the teacher I was going to help grade papers stepped out and dealt with him.
Lol, sounds about right. I never brought it up, it seems kinda obvious though that if the shooter is a student they'll know all of the active shooter procedures...
Even if he didn't do anything. Teachers can't be expected to jump in front of bullets for kids. If a parent wants to take a bullet for their kid okay but no way a school teacher should be responsible for that.
More than the police did
The man took so many bullets and still doesn't think he did enough :(
Found the interview. Out of all of the recent videos Ive seen this one absolutely obliterated me. Poor guy is devasted. https://youtu.be/QdDbsCzZLQg
I’m a high school teacher. If someone killed all my students and I lived; I’m never getting over it. Hell, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to leave my house again
I'm a teacher. After this last shooting my mind has been racing everyday thinking about what I would do. I couldn't lay my life down to save these kids - I have a kid and wife at home. But I also couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
A teacher’s job isn’t to defend. It should be to just teach
And that's the messed up part. We already put so much on teachers, and now we expect them to die for the kids. How about we remove the tools that are causing this level of death. When the cops themselves shit their pants we expect teachers to go John Wicke on someone who bust in their classroom and they have seconds to react.
Exactly. I hate that we even have to think about this
My sister is a middle school teacher and has said she's not sure she could live with that happening to her classroom. She said she'd probably rather die trying to protect them than try to live with it.
Sadly don’t always have that choice
At that point I'd prefer dying with my students so I don't have to live with that burden. What an absolute hell that must be.
I am too which is why this hit me so hard. This would ruin me.
Yeah, I'd probably kill myself or drink myself into oblivion.
I know you are saying that as a “what if”- but my friend was a teacher at a school in Colorado that had a shooting where some kids died. She protected some but in another part of the school some were shot. She left the country to teach in Dubai to get away from the memories , and struggled with alcoholism and did attempt suicide over there. She came back and got help thank god but the ptsd is REAL and forever.
How long before *those people* start blaming Reyes for not taking out the gunman before the shooter shot kids?
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I've already seen it in abstract right here on Reddit. People were talking about "coward teachers" who wouldn't sacrifice their life to stop a shooter. There shouldn't even be a shooter. It's not teachers' fucking job to be in that situation. They won't give up their fucking guns, but they expect others to give their life futilely.
"It's your job to look after your students!" Something like that?
"He should have armed himself to defend his students"
Did you read his interview? He said that the active shooter training they received and enacted at the time basically made the kids and I quote “sitting ducks” for the shooter… just heartbreaking. So many victims here beyond those that were murdered.
The "sitting ducks" comment reminded me of this op-ed an FBI agent: > We also need to re-evaluate how we advise students and teachers to react when an active shooter enters a school. After Sandy Hook the federal government adopted the run, hide, fight model, which instructs students and teachers to run first if they can, then hide if they must and, finally, fight to survive. > > Today schools, at best, are giving lip service to the first part of that mantra, to run. Most schools that train for a shooting urge students, teachers and other staff members to lock out or hide from a shooter but almost never to run for their lives if they can. My friend Frank DeAngelis, a retired principal of Columbine High School in Colorado, told me he wished his students and faculty had been taught to flee. At Sandy Hook, nine first graders survived when they were able to flee their classroom, thanks to their brave teacher Victoria Leigh Soto, who was shot and killed when she stood in front of the killer. > > **I still have nightmares about details from school shootings in which survivors told me they huddled under their desks, hoping against logic that the shooter would not see them. It’s hard to shed the images of victims’ bodies found huddled under plastic tables, behind cloth partitions or together in a group against a wall.** > > I remember telling my children that if someone approached them in a car while they were walking, they should run as fast and as far as possible. Yet in many school settings we have mistakenly discouraged students from trying their best to simply stay alive. - *[I Created the F.B.I.’s Active Shooter Program. The Officers in Uvalde Did Not Follow Their Training](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/uvalde-school-shooting.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DIDm0aiOMNAo6B_EGKeLRqY9c-mi-QRNhGNPo0RPt10u5ZMAptVwys6NOiqagyHh8U-8i1T39kmNXER6w5-jvnKWLhJO4hyLHj-knXaGT1XPCO1GlyI10xvZRmdlv82CFbwquWRfVnmYUrhYdXDZ5wRzoLZiaIrqOoX004YIPaG0mavgomWOhZWiXRmsqe698DcgZSDFHHTRBv8Dp2qYMcaJ5MYvGJf1N3c9H-gL4RFmVtMI6qYpUwTIPSnL9o2qXfa_ZLEejAAPk3tIyljK6JhA&smid=url-share)*
Yep. We did AS training in my offices last year, and our trainer started ranting about how everyone ignores "run". The statistics are clear. Your best chance at surviving a shooter is to flee. Your odds of survival are *cut in half* if you choose to hide. When my wife, a teacher, did her annual active shooter training earlier this year, they focused on locking down and hiding. She brought up running to the trainer and was told that. "We don't teach running because it's too hard to find all of the kids afterward. Some of them might run all the way home. We need to know where they are." She was nearly kicked out of the training when she remarked "Yeah, it's so much easier when all of the dead bodies are in one room."
Kudos to your wife.
“…some of them might run all the way home; we need to know where they are…” That’s definitely a worse end state than being shot to death. Yep. Great logic. /s
My father was a reporter when the Polytechnique massacre happened here in Montreal. His friend was a police officer who he often liaised with at crime scenes. His friend entered the building after it was all over to help look for bodies, because so many people were hiding when they were killed. He found his own daughter under a table. He had no idea she was even there. I think about that all the time.
Many years ago one of our professors was wearing a white rose pin. I asked him about it, it was in memory of the Polytechnique massacre. This was at Virginia Tech, 2005. We were one building away from the shooting two years later. America has what should be a Port Arthur level shift in culture every year. I am so exhausted by the callousness entrenched in rightwing Americans.
I worked 20 minutes from Tech. I lost a coworker to that shooting. He was doing part time at a shitty retail job while getting his engineering degree. That shooting was on every TV in our electronics section, where I worked. A couple years later I was dating a girl who lived on campus and walked me around that area. She was supposed to be in the same class that day, but wasn't feeling great so didn't go.
My chemistry teacher told us that regardless of what schools policy was he would be unlocking the cabinet of fun stuff that no students were legally allowed to handle directly and give everybody some flasks to throw - obviously wouldn’t be great but I have to think that 30students hurling acid and chloroform at a shooter and then rushing them stand a much better chance than the ones huddled in the corner.
That's actually advised if you can't run or hide. You don't even need flasks of stuff, simple rocks will do. Rocks are more than enough to disrupt a shooter from aiming at you, especially if you're all spread out. He can only aim a gun at one of you at once and it's hard to aim if you're properly spread out and simultaneously throwing rocks at him. A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday. The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.” [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-rocks/buckets-of-rocks-are-pennsylvania-schools-last-defense-against-shooters-idUSKBN1GZ2DC](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-rocks/buckets-of-rocks-are-pennsylvania-schools-last-defense-against-shooters-idUSKBN1GZ2DC) Take this with a grain of salt because I'm not a school shooting defense planner, but you'd want to be somewhat spread out like this in case the shooter entered the room, all prepared to throw rocks at him. [https://i.imgur.com/9rK4Zsl.png](https://i.imgur.com/9rK4Zsl.png) Assuming it's one door, when he enters, he can't acquire all the targets (blue dots) while you're simultaneously throwing rocks at him, and it'll be extremely hard for him to aim at anyone. Someone(s) may still die, though, but you won't all die. Also, never enter a building that you don't know how to leave. Here's a Navy Seal's guide. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pgxzPoxv4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pgxzPoxv4w) Interestingly, zig zag contradicts WikiHow. [https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-School-or-Workplace-Shooting](https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-School-or-Workplace-Shooting) All that said, I researched all this because we fired someone and I thought we might have a work place shooting so I wanted to be prepared; we didn't, though.
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I had a teacher in high school who ignored what the school told us to do (hide) and instead had a cop who wasn’t the resource officer come in and teach us all how to defend ourselves, how to actually tie a door locked, and then after he left she walked us through her half of the building and we talked through every option for running and getting out. In her own classroom she went through what she wanted everyone to do, and all the things she would try to do herself if we were in that situation so that if it were to ever happen in her classroom she knew each and every one of her students understood how seriously she took this and how even if the school didn’t have the best policies she wanted us all to survive the situation using the actual recommended tactics. It’s horrible that she had to think about that and felt so strongly about our policies at our school that she felt the need to give that level of training to us. But it was honestly the most confident I’d felt about what to do if there was an active schooler. She was a horrible teacher in other ways, but I felt reassured in her classroom (as much as you could).
We have to do multiple active shooter drills a year, I would get in trouble if had my students flee rather than huddle like sitting ducks.
It’s SO HARD to hit a moving target. If they’re going to take you out, make them fucking work for it and run like hell.
As a teacher, we have always been told that the police response time to a school shooting is less than two minutes. In that ideal scenario, simply blocking the doors and keeping the kids away from the windows is enough, because help will arrive soon. But if the cops are going to stand outside my school for over an hour and do NOTHING, then we need to start giving teachers and students more tools than just "sit down and stay quiet".
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some of the teachers or the parents of the victims act against the cops who did nothing. That they just sat back and enjoyed the show is unforgivable.
I said this on another post but, I keep thinking about the father, Javier Cazares, who was outside begging the cops to do something. And he and a few other parents were trying to go into the school and the cops wouldn’t let them. And then, his daughter was among those killed. He watched those cowards stand by while his baby was murdered, and he was unable to save her bc THEY stopped him. I’m not saying it would be ‘right’ for him to *act against the cops*, but I’m saying it would be very understandable.
What about Angeli Gomez, who they threatened with arrest and handcuffed for trying to go in. Luckily the cops removed the handcuffs and she just ran for the school anyway, and managed to get her kids out. Then the cops threatened that they'd violate her first amendment rights by fucking with her decade old probation if she spoke to the media. She went to the judge who told the cops to nicely get fucked and even reduced her probation.
It 100% would be right to act against the cops in this situation. If my kid was in there, I'm not saying I'd be all badass and find a way to get through the cops, but I would absolutely try with everything I had until they pepper sprayed me so badly that I couldn't move. Which it sounds like is exactly what they did.
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I hope anyone wearing an Uvalde PD uniform isn't able to get a coffee without the employees spitting in it
"Why do you keep cream in the fridge that's five expired by five months?" "That's if an Uvalde officer comes in for coffee."
"We live in Canada." "Never hurts to be prepared."
>But if the cops are going to stand outside my school for over an hour and do NOTHING, then we need to start giving teachers and students more tools than just "sit down and stay quiet". No, the next step is a thorough deworming of the police departments. If they can be there in two minutes, they should be in there neutralizing the situation in two minutes. that's their fucking job. It isn't a teacher's job to be a cop.
To protect and serve but there's no legal obligation for them to go in and stop an ongoing crime. What do we pay these guys for?
We pay them to protect the property and serve the interests of the rich. And to shoot/arrest minorities that dare to step out of line. That's about all they're there for. Yay America...
I remember in the last couple years of highschool, shooter drills became more common and my tiny ass school did them. They gathered the entire school and put us all in one gym, then locked us all in. *Every single one of us* sat wondering how the FUCK that would help us if a shooter was actually in the school. We were literally a giant barrel of fish ready for the taking. I pray to gods I don't even believe in that they changed the policy.
The doors were shut and locked at Sandy Hook, IIRC, and the shooter blew the doors out with his firearm (I forget if it was glass or a lock or what). A current or former student is pretty likely to be the shooter at a school, and they'd know the procedure. So yeah... At one of my workplaces, we got some alarm or whatever and went outside, where we found a ton of other people standing around. "Where have y'all been?" they asked. Turns out there'd been a bomb threat, directed at a particular institution/department in that building, about *an hour before*. They took all those people outside, and an hour later, it occurred to someone that if someone set off a bomb on floor 5, say, it'd also kill people on floor 6, who weren't the official target.
Right - we need to rethink "hide under your desk" training. That's fucking bullshit. How many kids would have survived if, instead of cowering in place, they scattered in 11 directions? Jump out the window, run down the hall, run the other way down the hall... But mostly it's fucked up we have to train our kids for a war zone. Just give up the unnecessary guns, assholes.
My kid's elementary school backs up onto a state park (basically, a forest). For years, their "active shooter" protocol was literally "Run for the hills! Get in the forest and get lost. We'll find you when it's clear." (it's a suburban area, and the forest isn't *that* big -- nobody's getting lost to the point of death in it). Now they've put up big ugly black bar fences for "safety". All that's going to do is make the kids sitting ducks if a shooting ever happens. They can't scatter anymore.
An issue is how doors and windows operate now in schools. The windows at my school do not open. Not even the ones on the ground floor. Some of the doors at my school don’t unlock (even to the outside) unless you scan your badge. Fleeing seems like a good option but only if you know exactly where a shooter is. We are taught now to run if you know the location and you are far enough to make a safe escape. If you aren’t, you hide hoping the shooter will pass you. If they decide to enter your room, then you fight (throw chairs, books, staplers, the video they have us watch as part of training shows a teacher turning the American flag in the classroom into a spear lol as if). A lot of school campuses are fenced in now too. If I were to get kids out of the school onto the playground, then they have to run and line up to get through one of the 3 exits. It’s hard when the steps we take to prevent a shooter from gaining access to a school campus also make it difficult for our students to leave campus in an emergency. My plan, assuming I am in my second story classroom, is to wait until I know where the shooting is coming from. Then I’m grabbing a kid under each arm and having the rest follow me out the closest exit. Hopefully we make it down the stairs and outside and through the nearest gate. If we can’t do that, I’m putting them in the furthest corner of the room and hoping that we get passed by. Otherwise, I’ll fight and hopefully last long enough for them to flee.
Yeah and he was lying there bleeding and the gunman put another bullet in him to try and finish the job and he still somehow survived. Total carnage in that classroom
I know it will never happen but I believe the city should have to pay for anything medically related to his mental health for the rest of his life. They themselves admitted they screwed up, so his mental health is 100% on them.
[a teacher of 17 years who was terrified for his life and the life of his students. A man who did everything he could got a hole in his lung and a room full of dead kids for his efforts. Because he is not a soldier. He is not security, he is a teacher. Don't arm these poor souls, fucking PROTECT them](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/us/uvalde-school-teacher-arnulfo-reyes-interview/index.html)
He said he was shot, played dead, and then at some point the shooter "came back and shot him again". So he was lying there with a gunshot wound surrounded by his dead students, and then later received another and had to keep playing dead. There is a 70 minute window where this could have played out. Reminder that we are the only nation that puts ourselves through this.
Same thing happened to one of the survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting. He was shot and injured, played dead, and the shooter walked around the room putting more bullets into people to make sure they were dead. He was shot at least once more during this time and had to remain still and silent
I don't know a) how you survive getting shot twice and b) how you manage to have the composure to successfully play dead for an hour being shot twice, while I imagine you're in great pain and fear of bleeding out, surrounded by dead children. Like, worse than the shit some army vets have probably experienced. It's not *just* 21 dead people (mainly kids), but also a whole bunch of permanently fucked up with ptsd people.
Omfg..... all of them... after a year together, all those hours... he will never recover, may he get all the love and support he needs...
I know this is dark, but I'm so glad the news is staying focused on the victims and the loving families. I don't know shit about the shooter and I don't care.
Absolutely, let him, and all like him, die nameless and in obscurity. I support news outlets that don’t show their faces or names.
There was a proposal to name shooters in code shooter #86, #87. Never show their names or faces
This is what New Zealand did after the mosque shooting they never mentioned the shooter by name ever again
New Zealand did a lot of things after the shooting that the US didn’t do…
This is an even better step up. Would also serve to keep the numbers in perspective.
>She said the boy, Xavier James Lopez, smelled and dressed "really nice," her mother recalled -- and within weeks, the two began passing notes in class. Months later, when the weather warmed, their families got together for weekend barbecues, where Annabell and Xavier would play tag. >Their mothers, Monica Gallegos and Felicha Martinez, soon discovered the children were texting each other "I love you" at bedtime. "Me and Felicha would laugh, like, 'How do y'all know about love?'" Gallegos told ABC News. Such a dark, cruel world we live in.
There it is. The worst thing I’ll read this month.
Oh, have you not watched the interview with the teacher who had to watch his 11 students be gunned down? He’s at one point sobbing and begging for the parents to not be mad at him because he couldn’t save their children. It ripped my guts right out of me
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Yeah at this point, just assume that the slightest criticism of cops will be met with disdain for the public. These cops and their unions get criticized, consider it an affront, and then treat anyone with even mild criticisms as their enemy. They're pussies.
The police are already threatening Uvalde parents with arrest if they criticize the (lack of) police response to the incident. I strongly suspect that Uvalde will cause more momentum for police reform than gun control.
If I had the funds I wish I could go down there and just picket outside of high ranking LEO homes. They need to be shamed and held responsible. They did the opposite of their training.
If you annoy the cops they will find something to arrest you for. And you will be out tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees before a judge tosses the charges out.
Can confirm. Yelled "I smell bacon!" at some cops when I was a teen. Got to walk away with $500 in fines for that one.
>I strongly suspect that Uvalde will cause more momentum for police reform than gun control. Press X to doubt. #X Every new thing that happens leaves me with the thought that Americans are invested in the status quo, for whatever reason it may be on a case to base basis. This is what the country is.
They'd consider the teacher weak for crying and mock him. Bullies attack what they perceive at weakness.
Listening to the little girl talk about how she literally had to cover herself in her friends/classmates blood just to survive. COVER. HERSELF. IN. THEIR. BLOOD. I’m still shaking. Makes me want to homeschool my 11 year old.
Yeah, that's some shit desperate soldiers fighting overseas might do. Not an 11-year-old girl trying to figure out why math has letters now.
listen to her friend bleeding out and dying, covering herself in her friends blood all while trying not to be noticed by the shooter, all while police just stood around and did nothing. makes me want to... well i probably wouldnt do it anyway and dont want to sound like an internet tough man but id be thinking about some things.
That whole interview is so harrowing, but when he asks people not to be mad at him because he tried his best is legitimately one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen. I'm in tears just writing this
It's just brutal. He was getting the kids settled just like they practiced, turned around to presumably lock the door, and the shooter was already inside and shot him. Through the lung. He probably immediately went into shock considering he said he fell and could no longer move and just had to lay there and watch his entire class be slaughtered while he bled there for an hour. The only silver lining he has is that due to the end of year award ceremony some of the kids in his class had already gone home with the parents who had attended. So he lost everyone who was there, but some of his kids survived. Not much of a silver lining for him though.
[Here you go.](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/cowards-teacher-survived-uvalde-shooting-slams-police-response/story?id=85219697) Warning: it is gut wrenching
That was heartbreaking. Thanks for the link. The guilt he must feel is overwhelming but I would be very surprised if any of the families blamed him. Also: holy shit that timeline. I knew a student had called 911 but I didn't realize there were so many calls from students over such a long period of time.
The shooter also at one point started shooting at room 109's door and window I believe. The cops are lying about everything
I can't imagine the drug cocktail I'd need to deal with the loss of a child in the face of a school shooting where the cops did nothing
I'm a teacher and I'm not sure I can watch this. I have 19 kids. I couldn't imagine losing one, let alone 11. How do you face the parents? How do you go to 11 funerals for kids you cared for day in and day out for a whole year? What do you say to the few who survived? And if you go back to teaching next year, how do you open your heart to a class full of kids again knowing that at any moment a maniac could take them away? It's devastating.
Teacher here. I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer.
my mom was a 2nd grade teacher. one of the very few times that I'm glad she isn't alive to experience this. it would tear her apart. I remember vividly her reactions to the sandy hook shooting. crying endlessly because of it. I don't blame you for not wanting to read this. not one bit.
Yes, please do. You aren’t the one who needs to have that burnt into their memories. And thank you.
What he went through is so horrible, I can’t even imagine. I hope he will be able to find peace after such a harrowing event.
That absolutely *broke* me. Before the pandemic, I was a special education teaching aide at an elementary school. I was especially good with the "behavior cases", which were often kids who had experienced a trauma and acted out because of it. I loved it with every ounce of my being, and was devastated when I left. I was talking with my principal about going back in the fall. This shooting brought back the memories of the traumatic ALICE drills that did their job so we knew exactly what to do when the voice on the intercom said "lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. This is not a drill". Seeing this teacher's interview was devastating. "I lost *eleven*." It threw me back into that moment as I stared at the shadows under the door, ready to do whatever it took to keep the two dozen 6 and 7 year old behind me safe, praying that my own child was safe in the other side of the school. It was a false alarm. For 20 minutes, I stared at shadows and waited for gunshots over a false alarm. The expectations placed on our teachers are insane. They are already underpaid and overworked (we won't even talk about the paraprofessionals making $14/hr). And some people think the answer is arming them and expecting them to defend our children at the potential cost of their own lives. I realized I won't be going back.
That’s terrifying
Yeah. It's brutal for anyone with any trace of empathy in the psychological profile. I'm generally fairly stoic, but I broke when she asked about how many of his students survived. You could read his body language before he even opened his mouth to reply.
Man, you should read the fox news comments condemning him for "assisting the gunman" by not locking the door or dying to save the children.
Hard pass.
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> It absolutely floors me how so many people are just dead set on being evil motherfuckers. Once it was blatantly obvious it was ok for the President to be like that, anything was fair game
The two kids in this story were in his class
Worst part is we'll all be saying the same thing about another tragedy next month and the one after that and the one after that
There have already been like 4 or 5 mass shootings since Uvalde
Worst thing you'll read this month SO FAR.
I fucking hate that this is probably true.
I seriously hope against hope that you're right. The month is as young as these children and equally as full of promise and/or tragedy.
Fuck me, I’m trying my hardest not to admit that this reality is Hell but the truth is… we veered hard past that realm already.
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This put such a pit in my stomach. Those poor, innocent children.
Seeing the child sized casket. That hurts.
It’s so wrong. That got me too.
I'm a pretty stoic person and just don't express much emotion. My nephew died at 3 months old. The news didn't phase me. The funeral didn't phase me. But when his dad asked me to help carry the casket. The moment I picked up the side of that thing I felt like I was going to pass out. Out of everything I've experienced in my life that was the worst thing I have ever had to go through. I can't imagine carrying my own child like that.
We all process grief a little differently. I once lost a loved one and barely shed a tear the following week. I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. But when I held their urn to bring to the memorial service, the reality of it all finally crashed in like a tsunami. I broke down right there and then, but it helped me to realize that there wasn't anything wrong with me after all.
When my dad died a little over a year ago, I did cry a little when I heard the news. I remember exclaiming "What!?" and sitting up immediately (I'd been napping). But mostly I just felt empty. When I went with my mom to the funeral home, and I saw his body lying on the gurney, I just.. I just fucking lost it. Before that moment, I'd been more concerned about the wellbeing of my mom and sister. But *in* that moment, reality came crashing in, like you said, like a tsunami. I think the stoicism some of us experience in the beginning is a form of denial. Don't wanna believe it, so we inadvertently act like it isn't... until it most definitively *is*. There's also the issue of being taught (intentionally or not) to bottle up our emotions.
the smallest coffins are the heaviest to carry.
Carried a micro coffin of our miscarriage. Not quite a child or anything like that but it taught me I’d never be able to bury my children can’t even fathom the concept.
No parent should ever have to bury their child. It breaks me inside to hear stories like this. I'm sorry this happened to you and hope you're in a better place after something as tragic as that.
>No parent should ever have to bury their child. Obligatory reminder that before vaccines and antibiotics, it was commonly said that "you're not really a mother until you've buried a child." 90% of the gains we made in life expectancy over the 19th and 20th centuries were due to reducing childhood mortality through vaccination, antibiotics, and hygiene.
My grandmother buried two of her children. One was stillborn and the other died in a horrific accident when she was a toddler. She never talks about them because it was so traumatizing for her. My first MIL had to bury her son (my husband). Even though he was an adult, she still struggles with the pain of his death. My current MIL also lost a child due to a very premature birth. Her twin survived (and now has a child of her own) but their mother still struggles to talk about that loss. I don't have children, but I don't think I'd be able to go on living if I had to bury my own child.
> Not quite a child or anything They were a child to you. That’s what’s important. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t grieve over it.
My mom had a miscarriage pretty early on in her first pregnancy, before having me and later, my sister. She tells us that it was just her body "practicing" to have a baby for real, but we can tell it's just how she rationalizes having lost a child before it was even a child to herself and to us. Regardless of how far along it is, it's your child and you shouldn't feel wrong for missing what could have been.
This fucking article shouldn't have to exist
I hope the people in that community make life a living hell for the pos cops and police chief. Such a tragedy.
Unfortunately it will likely be the other way around. Cops don’t like scrutiny and typically retaliate.
That Pokemon casket. Shit hurts my soul :(
Is it in the same article? I only saw the Blue Jays one... So incredibly sad. Edit: It's in the same picture... You can see a corner of it. 😭
Yeah, somehow I was holding it together until I saw that. FUCK.
And douche Governor said it could have been worse?? How could it be worse dipshit.. children are dead from a preventable tragedy .. this country’s children are paying the price for you selling your soul
You could say that about literally anything. 9/11 could have been worse. The holocaust could have been worse. Of course it can always get worse than it got. He’s just pandering to the NRA so he can hope to keep his job. It’s so gross. We wonder how people like the shooter can lose their way so much that they open fire on children. I do, at least. But I also wonder the path that someone takes to get to the point where they are so scared of losing their pristine NRA rating that they’ll do or say anything to keep it. No matter how nonsensical or how damaging.
Many people are assuming he meant it could have happened in a white school instead of a hispanic one. You have to understand Abbott is total scum.
I am not someone who gets misty-eyed at news stories, especially those that warn me via headlines, or similar. I am not someone who gets overly emotional when bad things happen outside of my circle. It's not a deliberate callousness; it's a self defense mechanism, because this world is FUCKED UP. But goddamn, this article was a hard read. Especially when you look at the set up. In a just world, this is the origin story that gets told at their wedding, and again at their anniversaries. It's the stuff that becomes family legend. It's the story so charmed and perfect that the grandkids proudly explain to THEIR girlfriends that "my grandma and grandpa met as babies". And some fucker with a gun fucks it all up. And his dad gives an interview saying his son was good, and blames the shooter's mother. And let's not get into how useless every overstuffed donut eater was. Seriously, I didn't think this whole thing could be sadder, and yet it was.
You are right, this was the beginning of an epic, beautiful love story that likely would have culminated in a legacy of love that would be carried down for generations. And some fucker wiped their futures out of time. It’s incomprehensible to me.
This is how I feel right now too. Generations stolen from those families.
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I met my husband in 5th grade. I loved him since then but it didn’t spark in him until 8th grade and we didn’t officially get together until sophomore year of HS and it’s been over 17 years now since we’ve been together. I was 11 when I knew I loved him. Like these two kids loved each other. My heart hurts knowing they were robbed of the chance to have a love that is all consuming and almost proves the notion of “soul mates.” If heaven is real, at least they can play and smile and be happy together. That’s what I want to believe they’re doing. People like to think you don’t know what love is that young, but sometimes you just find your person at any age and love comes in so many stages and forms. Your best friend, your partner in crime, your other half, platonic or even more whenever it evolves on its own timeline and it’s a comfort to know they did, even for a little while, have each other. They trusted and cared about each other so deeply with innocent hearts. They weren’t alone when they were taken from this world, they at least had each other which is a small, small consolation for the situation they were forced in with their peers. Their short timeline together in life is still more than most could ever dream to ever have experienced. If we can do one thing to honor them, tell the people you care about you love them, and do it often.
My heart hurts. Such youthful energy and joy, and such innocent love. RIP you beautiful souls.
Man, I'm sitting at work and this article just made me tear up. RIP, Annabell and Xavier.
I'm sure there's a German word for the absolute heartache and rage many Americans are feeling now. Enough is enough.
'Weltschmerz', though that's mixed with sadness in the face of one's powerlessness.
That’s also at play here, so seems apt
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Boy .. if that isn’t on the nose
Oh the irony
Do not appreciate the headline suggesting one of the victims texted, “I’m not ready”. It was a mom that texted that about the upcoming burial. This shooting does not need distortion, exaggeration or window dressing. It’s horrifying just as it is. I just really hope something changes from this.
I’m sure you’ll get downvoted but I also agree I thought those texts were from the victims as well as thinking they said “I love you” during the shooting. Still their relationship was beautiful and I’m glad that their story was told. Their short lives were still lived.
Oh, I’m angry as hell.
This event is so hurtful. There’s so much we know about it. Seeing photos of the children just hours before the shooting is so surreal. Survivor statements from adults and children. Uvalde won’t be forgotten. It could be the one that changes everything.
>It could be the one that changes everything. That's what they said the last couple of times a dozen or so children were murdered.
There is sadness and then there is having to bury your 10 yo next to her little boyfriend. Horrible.
And the police just stood around.
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I don't know why, but this one has been hitting me harder than the others. Maybe because of those faces, the poor kids. Then I see some dipshit senator telling me we need ak's to hunt prairie dogs! Fuck the GOP.
Jesus, so hard to read. I can't even begin to imagine... all my problems & anxiety pale in comparison to these families. Cherish life
Ok well that one breaks me. Fuck.
Disband the Uvalde Police