Uvalde staffer wrongly blamed for facilitating shooting speaks out
A staff member at the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school where 21 people were shot to death in May says she is traumatized not only by the massacre she survived – but also because she was prematurely and incorrectly blamed for inadvertently facilitating the killings.
Emilia “Amy” Marin, the Robb elementary school speech pathologist who called 911 on the day that a man invaded the campus and began shooting people indiscriminately, for the first time spoke out about her post-traumatic stress struggle in an interview with ABC News which aired on Monday.
“I died that day,” Marin told ABC News’s John Quiñones. Though she said she wants to learn to live with what her community endured on the day of the killings at Robb because she “can’t let [the gunman] win”, she also acknowledged: “Right now, I’m lost. Sometimes I go into a dark place, and it’s hard when I’m there.”
Nineteen students and two teachers were slain at Marin’s workplace on 24 May after an 18-year-old man wielding a rifle stormed on to the school after first shooting his grandmother. Police fatally shot the intruder after waiting more than an hour to confront him.
The investigations into the worst school shooting in the US since the 26 killings at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook elementary in 2012 have since largely focused on why police dawdled at
Robb, along with the numerous warning signs about the gunman’s increasingly concerning behavior that officials missed.
Yet in the early stages of the Uvalde killings’ aftermath, officials partially blamed Marin, without naming her, saying that she had used a rock to prop open an exterior door which allowed the intruder easy access to the campus.
Officials later said Marin had in fact closed that door, though for some unknown reason it didn’t automatically lock as it was supposed to. It was one of countless times authorities shifted their narrative of events in the wake of the bloodshed.
Marin recounted being the first to call police for help after she saw the intruder crash a truck outside her school, realized he came on to the campus and heard children scream as he began shooting.
“It wouldn’t stop – he just kept shooting and shooting,” Marin, who coordinated Robb’s after-school programs, told ABC News.
Marin said she hid under a counter as she described the horrifying sights and sounds surrounding her.
“The whole time I am asking the operator, ‘Where are the cops? Where are the cops?’” Marin said.
After the terror stopped, Marin said she was so distraught to hear officials initially blame her that her daughter had to take her to the hospital.
“I was shaking from head to toe,” Marin said. “The nurse walked out and my boss came in and I told her I closed that door.”
Marin said she asked to speak with the Uvalde school district’s superintendent, Hal Harrell, before officials retracted their statement about the rock and the propped-open door. According to Marin, Harrell declined to speak with her at the hospital or elsewhere.
“He could have defended me – he … chose not to,” Marin said. “It makes no sense when you have dedicated your life to working for the district.”
A spokesperson for Texas’s public safety department said the agency had apologized to Marin and her family “for the additional grief” caused by the initial release of erroneous information about her.
Marin suggested that she nonetheless decided to speak out about her ordeal because people could tell officials were referring to her despite not naming her.
She also said that she has since filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the rifle used to kill the students and teachers at Robb, and she is mulling other legal options.
“I have to defend myself,” Marin said.
Harrell retired from his job on 10 October. His retirement came days after officials suspended the school district’s entire police force, whose chief, Pete Arredondo, had been fired from his post in late August.
Robb’s students, faculty and staff have been moved to new schools in Uvalde, and the ill-fated campus is supposed to be torn down and rebuilt.