UVALDE, Texas (AP) – Days after a local man burst into an elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers before officers managed to kill him, the signs of grief, solidarity and local pride are everywhere in Uvalde.
Many are wearing maroon, the color for Uvalde’s school district. And light blue ribbons adorn the giant oaks that shade the city’s central square, where mourners come to lay flowers around a fountain and write messages on wooden crosses that bear the victims’ names. In front of a day care center on one of the city’s main streets, 21 wooden chairs sit empty.
Everyone in the predominantly Latino city of roughly 16,000 people seems to know someone whose life has been turned upside down by losing a family member or close friend in the attack at Robb Elementary School, which was one of the deadliest of its kind.
Joe Ruiz, pastor of Templo Cristiano, said a teacher who is friends with his wife – herself a former Uvalde teacher – summed up the community’s mood best by saying people have “cried out everything” they could and are now just tired and needing rest.
Police have come under heavy criticism for waiting more than 45 minutes to confront the 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, inside the adjoining classrooms where he unleased carnage.