“We said that we loved her,” Kimberly, 33, tells PEOPLE in its latest issue, “and that we would pick her up after school.”
Uvalde Leader News
Those would be the last words the Rubios would ever share with their daughter. At 11:33 a.m., 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos entered the school through an open back door and beganfiring more than 100 roundsinside two fourth-grade classrooms,killing 19 children and two teachers.
Officer Rubio, 35, who was off duty, put on his uniform and raced to the school. He arrived to a scene of such unspeakable horror that DNA tests were needed to identify the victims. “I don’t want to say what I saw,” he tells PEOPLE.
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The massacre is the deadliest school shooting since theSandy Hook Elementary School shootingnearly a decade ago. As the nation — and the world — reacted with grief and outrage, the close-knit community in Uvalde was plunged into anguish. “When is enough going to be enough?” asks Vincente Salazar III, 45, whose 11-year-old daughter Layla was killed in the attack.
Those who survived the shooting now find their lives forever changed.
Adalynn Garza.Ilana Panich-Linsman
For more stories of heartbreak and hope from the Uvalde shooting,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
Berlinda Arreola, the grandmother of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, who was fatally shot while trying to call 911, tells PEOPLE, “It’s like we’re in a nightmare.”
Adalynn Garza, 9, was on the swings with her friend during recess when the shooting began. A PE coach told everyone to run inside to hide. When she finally emerged more than an hour later, her entire world had been shattered.
While Adalynn herself escaped with no physical injuries, her invisible wounds are staggering. No longer able to sleep, she yearns for her favorite doll, named Kissy Missy, who was in her pink backpack that she left behind when she fled the school.
“I feel scared,” she tells PEOPLE in its latest issue. “Because what happens when it happens again?”
- ELAINE ARADILLAS and WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR contributed reporting
source: people.com
