UVALDE, Texas – The grieving Texas town of Uvalde begins laying to rest the 21 school children and teachers who were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school a week ago, with two funerals scheduled Tuesday for two 10-year-old girls.
According to obituaries on the websites of Uvalde’s two funeral homes, Amerie Jo Garza was sweet, sassy and funny, and loved swimming and drawing; Maite Yuleana Rodriguez was an honor student who loved learning about whales and dolphins and dreamt of becoming a marine biologist. Amerie’s funeral was set for Tuesday afternoon at Uvalde’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church and Maite’s in the evening at a Uvalde funeral home.
They were killed along with 17 other students, all aged 9 to 11, and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman who burst into their fourth-grade classroom and opened fire with a high-velocity AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.
Monday, artists raced to complete a mural depicting white doves on the side of the Ace Bail Bonds building, near the cemetery.
“Those kids were full of life and dreams,” said one of the artists, Yanira Castillo, 34, who has lived her entire life in Uvalde. “A town does not get over that. It will affect us forever.”
A series of funerals is scheduled for the next two weeks in the town of 16,000, which is nearly 80% Latino or Hispanic and largely Roman Catholic. Among those are services for the two teachers who died, Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia, 48.
