UVALDE, Texas — On the day the nation sets aside to remember those killed in war, Uvalde began saying farewell to the 19 children and two teachers who were massacred in a shooting at their elementary school.
The visitations for Amerie Jo Garza, 10, at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, and for Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10, at Rushing-Estes-Knowles Mortuary Inc., were the first services to be held Monday, which was Memorial Day.
Family members and friends mourned and prayed the rosary, keeping out the omnipresent cameras and reporters drawn to the rural Texas community that has been thrust into the nation’s conscience.
“We are crying with them. We are shedding tears with them. We are praying with them,” said Dorina Davila, of San Antonio, who said she worked at a Head Start preschool program and is a mother and grandmother.
Maite was remembered in her obituary as a “sweet girl” who wanted to become a marine biologist “because of her caring heart towards wildlife and the animals within it.”
“Those who know and loved her were blessed with her kind, ambitious, friendly and sweet soul,” her obituary reads.
Maite’s funeral was set for Tuesday after the visitation Monday.
Funerals for the other victims of last Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School are scheduled throughout this week and into the middle of next month.
As people arrived to remember Amerie under cloudy gray skies Monday, the twitter of a house finch and the squeaks of western kingbirds could be heard. A breeze bent the palms trees and flapped the American and Texas flags flying half staff at the funeral home.
Amerie was shot while dialing 911 in an effort to help her classmates, her grandmother Berlinda Irene Arreola told The Daily Beast.
Earlier in the day, the fourth grader had received a certificate for making the honor roll.
Inside the funeral…
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