Angeli Rose Gómez, a mother who risked her life to rescue her children from the shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde (Texas), tells Efe that the authorities “failed” the 21 victims and complaint that they have suffered “harassment” by police officers.
The past 24 de mayo Gómez was working in the field collecting onions like every day when they told him that at the school of his children, 8 and 9 years old, there was a shooting.
“My mother called me and said: ‘They’re shooting here at Robb School. I don’t know where the shooter is but there are shots. You have to come,’” he says.
Does not remember how but he claims that he ran through the fields and drove his car more than 100 miles (100 kilometers) per hour to the entrance of the school in Uvalde.
“Immediately the police officers who were there approached me and told me that I could not park in that place, so I told them, ‘Why are you talking to me here? Why are they not entering the school? What are you doing to save the children?’”, she recalls.
Instead of answering her questions, the agents handcuffed her and told her that they would not release her until she calmed down.
“I knew that the only way they would release me was to tell them I was going to cooperate, and they released me three or five minutes later ”, she says.
She could only think about the safety of her children. When he was freed from the handcuffs and, in the midst of the confusion, he saw an open school door and ran into the classroom of one of his children, and together with the teacher he managed to get the whole group out.
TO THE RESCUE
“Then I came back and got to my second son’s classroom. At first the teacher didn’t want to open the door for me and the police tried to get me out, but I told them that I wouldn’t leave if they didn’t evacuate the entire classroom as well, and that’s when they started to get them out”, she says.
All this happened during the armed incursion of Salvador Ramos, aged 18, who shot dead 19 children and two teachers, and injured others 17 people.
“They failed us; the police failed us all”, he maintains.
She assures that once her children were out, she stayed in the place looking to find out about a niece, and witnessed how other parents begged the police on their knees to come in and save their children.
“Some parents, like me, were threatened with handcuffing, another with pepper spray. They treated us as if we were the shooters, the criminals, while they didn’t do anything to the real murderer”, she narrates.
She is convinced that lives would have been saved if the agents had entered quickly.
“What hurts the most is that Many parents were outside the school begging the police, not knowing that some of their children were being killed at the time,” says Gómez.
Parents have blamed the decision to wait so long to Pete Arredondo, local police chief, currently suspended from his duties.
“From the beginning they lied to us and I think they continue to lie to us; They keep changing the version of events over and over again,” he says.
Reports that hours after the shooting many parents were desperate because they had no news of their children. Some had been told that perhaps the children were in hospitals in other cities, others that perhaps they left school on their own.
“Many parents turned to social networks and television asking for The cooperation (…). All this while the police themselves knew that the children were dead”, he laments.
The pain of the parents and the community made them organize to demand a state change in the laws that allowed a young of 18 years will freely buy an AR-style semi-automatic weapon 15.
FIERCE MADRES
Gómez is part of the newly formed group of Latin mothers Fierce Madres, already made up of more than 1,000 people, many of them relatives of the deceased.
Consider a first passed the federal law recently signed by US President Joe Biden, which strengthens background checks on gun buyers up to 21 years.
However, she is convinced that changes are required at the state level, especially in Texas, where fa encourages the purchase and possession of firearms.
Gómez and other parents ask that Robb Elementary not be demolished while the facts are fully investigated, and above all that there be an independent investigation.
She assures that her criticism has made her a target of the authorities, who in her opinion want to silence her.
“They keep harassing me. There are constantly patrols stopped or passing near my house, and on occasions they have stopped me in the street to check my car for no reason,” she denounces.
She maintains that she has received strong criticism on social media and messages that tell her: “There are no police here to help you, just as you say there were none at school.”
Despite this, she affirms that she will not stop fighting because even though her children who survived continue to feel very afraid and do not want to leave the house alone.
“No child should be afraid to go out; You don’t have to be afraid to go to school,” he concludes.
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–Mother of the Uvalde victim who was recognized by her Converse greens talks about the heart her daughter drew on them
–Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo suspended for late response to shooting
–New images from inside a school in Uvalde reveal that police officers waited almost an hour to enter the room where Salvador Ramos was