‘It’s like we don’t know each other anymore’
Response to mass shooting causing divisions in Uvalde, Texas
At a school board meeting this month in Uvalde, Texas, parents and administrators found themselves locked in what had become a familiar argument: Nearly a year had passed since a gunman breached Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two teachers. The community was still waiting for officials to fully disclose how it happened.
“Almost a year now, and honestly nothing has changed,” Jesse Rizo, the uncle of one of the massacre victims, told the board. “These people are pretty much begging you guys to answer questions. You came here, and you pretty much oppress people. They ask you questions, you don’t have answers.”
Despite the passage of time, there is still strong disagreement over who should be fired for the slow police response to one of the worst school shootings in American history and what position the town should take on the repeated calls from families of the victims to restrict guns.
Neighbors who have known one another for years now find themselves unable to agree and more distant than ever before.
“We used to be a close community,” Rizo said after the school board meeting May 15. “Now it’s like we don’t know each other anymore.”
United in grief in the weeks after the shooting that ignited a national firestorm over how police respond to mass shootings, Uvalde, in the painful months since then, has drifted apart, dividing along fault lines that barely existed a year ago.
The fissures run deep and remain raw: between the victims’ relatives lobbying for stricter gun laws and neighbors who have long been avid hunters and gun owners and bristle at any new restrictions; between supporters of the police, who are the subject of a district attorney’s investigation for their delay in taking down the gunman, and residents who now distrust law enforcement; between those still in mourning and those who would like to move on.
Frictions have occasionally spilled into the open in a city where everyone still shops at the same grocery stores, eats at the same restaurants and attends the same Little League games.
At a recent library event, residents pulled the city manager aside to ask, quietly, about when Uvalde could begin to put the shooting behind them, starting with finally getting rid of a makeshift shrine to the massacre’s victims that still fills the central plaza. “I’ve had more than one person ask me: When are you going to clean up the plaza?” said the city manager, Vince DiPiazza. There have been overt displays of anger. The relatives of one of the children killed screamed at the mother of the 18-year-old gunman after running into her by chance on the street last year. A local pastor drew ire for defending the police during a school board meeting last summer. One person urged him to sit down, shouting, “Your time is up!”
“The negativity divides. You have everybody getting mad,” said Berlinda Arreola, the step-grandmother of one of the victims.
Disagreements and lingering resentments have complicated the preparations for Wednesday’s commemoration of the massacre. Officials urged outsiders to stay away from Uvalde, while relatives of some residents planned a memorial march through town.
After more than 100 students walked out of classes last month as part of protests against gun violence, school administrators warned them they would face consequences the next time.
Long after the gunfire, Uvalde remains on edge. Recently, the City Hall and a large supermarket went into lockdown after residents circulated images of a man walking around downtown with a gun on his shoulder. (It turned out to be a BB gun.) Some parents kept their children home from school during the final full week of classes this month amid social media threats of violence that turned out to be unfounded.
Rifts have grown even among the families. Joe Alejandro, whose niece was killed, found himself disagreeing with other relatives who have been demanding stricter gun laws, such as raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy an AR-15-style rifle, the type used in last year’s massacre
“I’ve had guns all of my life, and my gun is not going to kill anybody,” Alejandro said. “This is how we grew up. You go hunting in the morning and go to school and the guns stay there,” he said, referring to his car. “Why come after me?”