Desperate families turn to social media to find missing kids
UVALDE, TEXAS: Relatives turned to social media and waited in a desperate attempt to find their missing children as the death toll in a gruesome school shooting at a Texas elementary school rose to at least 19 students.
Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air conditioning repairman, was still outside Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde on Tuesday night as the sun set, waiting for word on his 10-yearold great-granddaughter, Elijah Cruz Torres, whose whereabouts remained unknown to family.
Cruz drove to the scene after receiving a tearful and terrifying call from his daughter shortly after the first reports that an 18-year-old gunman had opened fire.
While he waited outside the school Tuesday night, his family was at the hospital and civic centre waiting for any potential word on her condition.
Çruz called the waiting the heaviest moment of his life. “I hope she is alive,” Cruz said. “They are waiting for an update.”
“It’s a shock for me. I also feel for all the other families. This is a small community. Uvalde has always been real friendly. People are real friendly,” Cruz said.
On social media, pictures of smiling children were posted, their families begging for information.
Classes were winding down for the year and each school day had a theme. Tuesday’s was Footloose and Fancy. Students were supposed to wear a nice outfit with fun or fancy shoes.
By nightfall, names of those killed during the attack were beginning to emerge. Fourthgrade teacher Eva Mireles was remembered as a loving mother and wife.
“She was adventurous. I would definitely say those wonderful things about her. She is definitely going to be very missed,” said 44-year-old relative Amber Ybarra, of San Antonio.
Ybarra was preparing to give blood for the wounded and was pondering how no one was able to spot possible problems in the shooter in time to stop him.
“To me, it’s more about raising mental health awareness,” said Ybarra, a wellness coach who attended the elementary school where the shooting happened. “Someone could possibly have seen a dramatic change before something like this happened.”
A mass shooting that left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead in the deeply pro-gun state of Texas on Tuesday increased pressure on US politicians to take action over the ubiquity of firearms - but also brought the grim expectation of little or no change.
The US has seen 212 mass shootings this year alone as of Tuesday, according to Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group. It came 10 days after another 18-year-old murdered 10 African-Americans at a supermarket in New York.
But nearly 10 years after a man slaughtered 20 children and six others in an attack on the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and four years after 17 were killed at a Florida high school, restrictions on gun purchases and ownership have not significantly changed.
“I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this, again,” a distraught President Joe Biden said as he led national mourning, vowing to overcome the US gun lobby and find a way to tighten gun ownership laws.
“Another massacre... an elementary school. Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders,” he said. “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”
But guns of all kinds, especially high-powered assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols are cheaper and more widely available than ever across the US.
And the all-too-familiar arguments over guns, public safety and rights reopened immediately on the news of Tuesday’s mass shooting.
Too ‘politicised’?
The debate is set to intensify going into the weekend when Houston, Texas hosts the annual convention of the country’s leading pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.
Scheduled to speak at the convention is former president Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Texas senator Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans. Senator Chris Murphy,