Consider This from NPR - Uvalde One Year Later

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

It's been one year since an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and 2 teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The tragedy reignited debates around gun safety in America and has haunted a community still seeking to fully understand how law enforcement was so slow to take down the shooter. About a month after the shooting, Congress passed the most significant gun legislation since the Federal Assault Weapons ban of 1994, but many Republican led-states, including Texas, have resisted gun safety legislation, even loosening gun restrictions.Uvalde, too, is divided — between those who want stricter gun laws and those who oppose them, between those who want to mark a year since the massacre, and those who want to move on. And for the families who lost loved ones, they're still searching for justice, accountability, and healing. NPR's Adrian Florido reports from Uvalde. And we hear from Texas Tribune reporter Zach Despart about the police response to the shooting.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. One year ago, a lone gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Rob Elementary in the small town of Uvalde, Texas. Like other communities before it, Uvalde, previously little known outside Texas, became synonymous with the seemingly unstoppable epidemic of mass shootings. The shooting on May 24th came just 10 days after a gunman killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Pressure for U.S. lawmakers to actually pass gun safety legislation

reached a fever pitch. President Biden addressed Congress shortly after. For God's sake, do something. After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done. This time, that can't be true. About a month after the shooting, Congress did pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It was the most significant piece of gun legislation since the federal assault weapons ban in 1994, which expired in 2004.

Last year's law implemented changes to the nation's mental health systems, school safety policies, and moderately reformed gun safety laws. Yet many state legislatures in Republican-led states, including Texas, have resisted passing stronger gun safety legislation, and in some cases, have loosened restrictions. Here's NPR's Martin Koste. In the red states, what you hear about is the right to carry, the fact that this means that people need even more to be armed to protect themselves, and that there should be fewer impediments to having a gun on you. That hasn't stopped some families in Uvalde from taking action themselves. Last year, Christina Zamora's family became the second to file a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the gun used in the shooting.

The suits allege the company uses deceptive methods to market its product. Zamora's daughter survived the shooting and has had dozens of surgeries. We need to speak up for our daughter, for our family, for children in the future. Maybe, you know, this will make a change. 19 children died. They were massacred by an 18-year-old boy. There's something wrong there. Consider this.

Like the people of so many cities before them, the people of Uvalde, saw what was supposed to be a safe communal space become a killing field. As the U.S.'s epidemic of gun violence continues, we return to Uvalde a year later. From NPR, I'm Adrian Florido. It's May 24th. Support comes from our 2023 lead sponsor of Consider This, Capital One. I'm Adrian Flaurido. It's May 24th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time, mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. A year later, there are still questions about why hundreds of law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene were so slow to enter the classroom and kill the shooter. Dozens of them waited out in the hallway for 77 agonizing minutes. Zach Despart is a politics reporter for the Texas Tribune. He was part of an investigation that looked at records on the police response that day. Speaking with Here and Now's Scott Tong, he says police arrived on the scene within about three minutes. But from reviewing the interviews that officers in the hallway there

gave with investigators in the days after the shooting is, those officers repeatedly said when they realized that the gunman had an AR-15 style rifle, a rifle that they knew could penetrate the body armor that they were wearing at that time, that is when they concluded it was too dangerous to confront the gunman, even though that's what their training tells them to do. That is why they wait for the arrival of the Border Patrol SWAT team that ultimately ends the shooting. The firepower of an AR-15 allowed the gunman to kill quickly

and with terrible efficiency. Our review of law enforcement files found that there were three people alive at the time of the breach, more than an hour later, who died before they reached the hospital. But the other point that is also important is that the investigators concluded that most of the people who were killed, so about 18 of the 21, were killed before police got to the school. The shooter fired about 140 times. Most of those rounds, 100 of them at least, were in the first three minutes before police got there. The Despart says there are still many unanswered questions for Uvalde residents, in part because they've been given so little information from local and state governments.

I came to Uvalde this week to try and understand how those unanswered questions are weighing on surviving families and how a community carries on at the same time it's searching for justice, accountability, and healing. Maggie Mireles' sister, Eva Mireles, was one of the two teachers killed at Robb Elementary that day. A year later, Maggie's house is a sort of shrine to her sister's memory. She has framed smiling photos of Eva everywhere. Downstairs, upstairs, next to my bed, in the hallway, in my bedroom, in my closet, everywhere.

In her garage, she has large plastic bins stacked all along one side. My Eva stuff, you know, these are all flowers from her funeral, the plaza, or Rob, or... From all the memorials. Yeah, from all the memorials. I haven't thrown anything away. Everything that I could save that people have put there for Eva, stuffed animals, I try to keep as much as I can. Since Eva was killed, Maggie's life has come to

revolve around honoring her sister's name. The same is true for Eva's other sister, Sandra Mireles Sanders. At this point, everything we do is for her. Everything. That might be not a good thing, but for me it is. That's how I will be able to live life, is live it for her. This is all part of the sisters' healing process, getting Eva's name and face tattooed on their arms, wearing Eva bracelets, custom license plates for their SUVs. It makes them feel closer to her, and sometimes just a little better. But only sometimes one day i think i'm doing good and and then i read something i see something and i i just get angry

because i i don't want it to be true still i don't i can't accept that eva's gone i don't want eva to be gone so i don't know that we're healing. I think we're understanding it a little bit more and just learning how to live with it. The sisters feel that part of what is holding them up on the path toward healing are the many questions about the shooting that are still unresolved, mostly stemming from the failed police response. It took police an agonizing 77 minutes to enter the classroom and kill the shooter. Eva was pulled into the hallway still alive, but she died there. Over the last year, her sisters have learned from her surviving students tidbits about Eva's fight to stay alive,

that she used a plastic bag to tourniquet her arm, that she kept saying she didn't want to die. But so many details are still missing, and so the Mireles sisters feel suspended in their grief, grasping to piece together a narrative, unable to move forward. That's why they asked to visit their sister's classroom before Robb Elementary School is demolished. Officials said, okay, as long as they didn't talk publicly about what they saw. That's where Eva was when this happened, and I want to go see. We don't know what to expect, but for me, that's going to be another piece of the healing to be in this spot

where she took her last breaths because that was it. The Mireles family is just one of the 21 families who lost someone in the Uvalde massacre. A year later, they're all searching for understanding, justice, healing. How do you ever heal from something like this? How do you heal from the murder of your daughter? Veronica Mata's daughter, Tess Marie Mata, was one of the 19 children killed. How have you tried to heal, or have you even started trying to heal?

As a mother, I was supposed to be there to protect her and I wasn't there to protect her. So I just, I need to know what happened to her before I can do any of that. Is that the big holdup for you? And you think many of the families is not having the details i don't think so much the details because i i don't want to know exactly what happened to her but i want to know if there was some chance that she could have survived i feel like if we know then those what if questions won't be there anymore. Like, what if they would have gone in faster? What if they would have stopped him before he went into the building?

You know, just those what-ifs. It's those open questions that haunt you. Yes. Yeah, it is. It is. And I don't think any of us can fully look forward to moving on until that closure is there. Is it possible to get that? I don't think we'll fully get it, but I think we'll get some of it. And I think it'll be enough to where we can start to live, start to learn how to live without her. Many of the families think, or hope, they'll learn more

once ongoing federal, state, and local investigations are complete. They hope the findings will tell them what they've been demanding to know all year. Why did the police take so long? They're also waiting on Uvalde's district attorney to decide whether to seek criminal charges against officers. But that question has become a source of deep tension on Uvalde's district attorney to decide whether to seek criminal charges against officers. But that question has become a source of deep tension within Uvalde. Because in this town of 15,000 people, many of the officers on the scene that day were related to or knew victims. It's just one of many uncomfortable truths that have widened divisions here.

Parents have transferred their children out of Uvalde schools. There have been lawsuits and frustration from surviving parents over how little their newfound activism has won support for gun control. It's been a challenging year. Ronald Garza is a Uvalde County Commissioner and he said the tragedy has so consumed Uvalde for the last year that there are many people here who are ready to turn the page and move on, and who've grown annoyed with families' persistent calls for answers, accountability, and reform. There's been some naysayers out there that, you know, okay, what do the parents want now? What do they want now? What do they want now? And I'm quick to remind them to say, hey, wait a minute,

you didn't lose a child. You didn't have to go identify a body. So just back off. They say, well, yeah, you're right. You're right. There has been some good, Garza says. The influx of donations has allowed parks to be renovated. Uvalde now has more mental health services than it ever had. And money is still flowing. But, he knows, true healing won't begin until families feel they've gotten the answers they need.

On Monday, Maggie and Sandra Mireles stopped briefly at their sister Eva's grave at the Uvalde Town Cemetery. They were on their way to Robb Elementary, where district officials were going to allow them an hour inside their sister's classroom in their search for closure. I don't know what to expect. My plan is to sit on the floor and read a rosary for not only her but everybody else that took their last breaths there. At the fenced-off and boarded-up school, the district superintendent led them to their sister's classroom. An hour later, they were back at the cemetery, removing Mother's Day decorations from Eva's grave. I don't know. I thought I was going to feel some kind of closure

or some kind of understanding maybe, and I didn't get none of that. I just felt heavy and my mind just kept going to just trying to figure out, piece together what happened. But yeah, it wasn't what I expected at all. Zandrup said she felt no more at peace than before. I need the peace of it. I'm hoping that's what it'll entail at the end of whatever I'm looking for. I'm going to keep trying. I don't know that I'll succeed. Healing remains elusive, she said. She knows it might be for a long, long time.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adrian Flaherty. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.