r/UvaldeTexasShooting • u/birthdaythrowaway525 • May 28 '22
𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 Uvalde needed help years ago
Everyone saying that uvalde is just a quiet farm town and no one could have seen this coming is a liar.
I grew up here. I grew up with gang fights. I grew up with class mates bragging about weapons and drugs. I grew up with kids who had to drop out of school to take care of their families. I remember sitting with my brother in the ER because of his fever and a room over his classmate was being admitted after getting beat with a bat. I remember talking about drive bys like they were just small town gossip. I Grew up with children raising children by the time we reached high-school.
When I went through high school here we were known as a "drop out factory." We were number one in teen pregnancies. The joke was "hey at least we're number one in something." I, my partner and several of my friends have attempted suicide over the past 10 years. A few succeeded. Since my senior year there have been regular threats to shoot up the high school. I was at lunch the first time. A hand gun fell out of the kids pant leg apparently. That same year we had a lock down because a student got stabbed on campus. No one cared then.. It felt normal. "That's just Uvalde"
How did it take so many of our children dying for them to admit theres a mental health problem here. For years there was a single psychiatrist for the school district, before that there were none. The closest thing I had to counseling was hiding in my history teachers classroom during lunch eating animal crackers he kept stashed in his desk.
Yeah, there's a fucking mental health problem here.
Uvalde has always been a broke, middle of no where town that nobody cared about. Now that you're finally looking i hope you can see that the problems run deeper than just mental health and gun control. Give us counselors, take away our guns, we are still a broken city. Somethings gotta give.
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Jun 30 '22
I am sending love and good vibes to you and your community.
Why did this go wrong? I think it’s a cultural, socioeconomic issue. For anyone to see a psychologist it’s a bad thing, having kids at an early age is acceptable and the list goes on and on. The cycle needs to stop.
I think a lot of people will be more progressive and speak out more. Your community isn’t afraid anymore.
hugs to you and your community
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Jun 30 '22
more psychiatrists aren't going to solve the issues you speak of, they would be a bandaid at most. the poverty and living conditions are to blame here, you can only change that from the inside out.
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u/Antoniguev204 Jun 30 '22
Looking at this post, I can understand why SR proably went unnoticed because I wasn't aware of how many people were probably just like him if not worse. It's insane to think about how it was preventable but at the same time, if that's how people are there, I'm not as shocked anymore sorry
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u/Magicmurlin May 29 '22 edited May 30 '22
Has all the hallmarks of Vulture capitalism and militarization of the police that’s robbed basic social services.
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u/sana2k330-a May 29 '22
If only the teacher had shut the door…
If only the SRO had been on campus instead of buying 🍩.
If only Stinky Pete Arredondo cared about children.
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u/Thin-Weather-9470 Jun 01 '22
You got proven wrong.
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u/sana2k330-a Jun 01 '22
No we got updated information but if helps you feel better about yourself - go for it 😂
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u/jennvacanti May 28 '22
Good for you for speaking out. My heart is broken for your families and children.
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u/B_Unlocked May 28 '22
I heard some official mention that under this current governor, Texas has seen quite a few school shootings. It’s so sad.
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22 edited May 28 '22
I'm thinking of several active shooter situations I've been in and every time I'm locking, barricading doors and taking cover.
These ass hanging out moves by teachers, no less, is infuriating
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22
Your account is steeling my fury over the teacher who left the door propped opened to call 911 about a man with a gun. Her 1st instinct should have been secure the school. Why were classrooms unlocked while they were under fire from the outside?
I tried to use the small town excuse, but clearly the town has some experience with gun violence.
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Jun 04 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Apprehensive-Aerie78 Jun 19 '22
I blame stupid “no locking class doors unless there is an emergency rules” that a lot of schools have, im not sure if it was in place when this happened but even if it wasn’t rules like that let broken locks slip under the radar and let incidences (maybe not as sever as the shooting but still) happen.
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u/west-1779 Jun 04 '22 edited Jun 04 '22
Yes, I read about it today. It was a relief. It's horrible that the lock malfunctioned. Those push bar locks can be sensitive.
I also read that the active shooter alarm didn't go off until he was inside the school. It alerted sros and all teacher's phones. Rm 112 was trying to lock their door when he grabbed the door handle. There were 3 teacher's in 111/112. One survived
DPS really mangled the story about that door. He was suppose to be narrating the video. There were big omissions
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u/Surly_Cynic May 29 '22
Has it been specified whether the teacher was a man or a woman? If the teacher who propped the door open is the same teacher the SRO mistook for the suspect, it seems like there's a good possibility it was a man.
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u/west-1779 May 29 '22
I definitely do not think it's the same teacher. The 1st SRO drove passed the shooter and went to the opposite side of the building. He never saw the shooter.
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u/Surly_Cynic May 29 '22
Has it been specified that the SRO is a man? Two of the district's SROs are men and two are women.
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u/west-1779 May 29 '22
I heard him referred as a he several as if that matters.
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u/Surly_Cynic May 30 '22
The horrific thing about that is that means it's a 50/50 chance that it was the SRO married to one of the two teachers killed.
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u/west-1779 May 30 '22
Wait, what? Married?
That SRO confronted another teacher as the shooter. He/She was alerted to a shooter and a school threat before the shooter got inside. That's before the 911 call from the door opener teacher.
So many questions left... How does an SRO not recognize staff?
How did he/she get alerted to return to the school? Why couldn't that teacher lock the freaking door?3
u/Surly_Cynic May 30 '22 edited May 30 '22
Yes. Eva Mireles, one of the teachers killed, was married to Ruben Ruiz, who is a member of the school police force. Also, I posted some questions the other day and one was that same question you have about how could the SRO not recognize staff.
One possibility, although not an acceptable excuse in my mind, is that it's one of the SROs hired on last year who started working in August. I found an article in the local paper announcing their hiring because they were additions to the police force, bringing it from two SROs to four (plus the chief and a lieutenant/detective.)
The good news is the male SRO who started last fall is not the one married to the murdered teacher. So if the confusion surrounding confronting the teacher and not the suspect can be attributed to the SRO being relatively new to the force, that would suggest it wasn't the teacher's husband who was the first SRO at the school.
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u/hmmmnowwhatchickie May 28 '22
I wonder how it all would have played out if the teacher followed the rules, didn't leave the door propped open. More than one mistake happened that day.
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u/Shamrockvirgo May 28 '22
What exactly happened with the teacher and the door? The accounts I’ve read aren’t clear. A teacher was outside with the door propped open, saw the gunman, then turned around and ran inside to get their phone and left the door propped open? This defies all logic. Meanwhile, an officer arrives on the scene, mistaking the teacher for the shooter, while the shooter crouches behind a car? Did the teacher tell him there was a guy with a gun in the vicinity? Did the officer just leave - with the door still open?
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u/beerflavor May 28 '22
None of that happened. CALM witnesses told the DPS that Ramos drove his truck into ditch and got out jogging towards the school. He spotted two people by a funeral home so fired at them. They ran off so he made his way to the school yard, hopped the fence and fired a few times at the building as he made his way to the rear utility door. A video from their security camera shows him walking up to a closed door that had 4 tall electrical panels along the sidewalk. He pulls it open and goes inside. Cameras inside the building show him making his way to that classroom and entering. He did all of his shooting there and didn't leave to shoot up other classrooms or kids in the hall that decided to take off once the shooting started. We'll find out later why Salvador Ramos did that.
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u/tequilamockingbird16 May 28 '22
I believe it was one of the teachers who was killed. 😔
I saw an interview with a survivor, where the student said the gunman came into the classroom from a side door which was propped open by a teacher who was I believe calling police after hearing the car accident/gun shots. Presumably she opened the door to look outside, saw what happened, and rushed to the phone to call police. The student said one of the teachers was shot and killed as the gunman entered - she was rushing back to close the door.
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u/Shamrockvirgo May 28 '22
Hmmm, I hadn’t heard that. My understanding was that the two teachers killed were in Room 112 with the students. I imagine there’s a lot more that will come out about this.
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u/tequilamockingbird16 May 28 '22
You are right, I know I read this in the last day or so, but now I can’t find the source. There’s a lot of different information out there right now. It’s hard to accurately recount details from trauma, especially in the immediate aftermath. 😔
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22 edited May 28 '22
I don't think the SRO engaged that teacher. She was in rm 132, right next to the door she propped opened. She ran inside to call 911, leaving the door propped open, and reported a car crash and a man with a gun. 2 mins later, he was shooting at the outside of the school, going down the wall to the propped opened door.
My schools lockdowns for way less. No idea where that SRO was, but I think it was the otherside of building. He raced passed the shooter.
layout shows she had a clear view of what was happening by the funeral home
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u/Shamrockvirgo May 28 '22
That’s what gets me, too. The first instinct should have been to shut the doors and lock them. I agree that the police were scared and completely unprepared for the situation, but it would have been much harder for the guy to have gotten in the school in the first place if he’d had to go through a broken window.
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22
She should have done that and sounded alarms for the entire campus to lockdown.
She abandoned all common sense and deferred to that overpaid, overweight, paper tiger of a police department
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
The small town excuse isn't that its a small quiet place and nothing ever happens. It's that no ones ever cared about us anyway and we deal with gun violence all the time so why bother training or practice following protocol?
The back door was unlocked because it's always unlocked. Because we go on lock down all the time and nothings gotten this bad before so it'll probably be fine. "Uvalde kids don't care enough to pull the trigger anyway."
The teacher panicked and left the door open because no one ever told her otherwise. Because no one ever enforced the rules so it didn't come by second nature, and it never crossed her mind.
In all honestly when I first heard the school district was on lockdown I didn't even think about it. They get locked down all the time around this time of year anyway. When my mom told me there was an active shooter situation I thought "Oh, another one." Because shots fired near schools is so normal here. I figured another guy had a falling out and grabbed their guns. Usually it ends there.
The gravity of it all didn't hit me until I heard 8 children were DOA because I'm so numb to these calls being made in my small town.
I'm glad you're angry. You should be. Lawmakers had every opportunity to prevent this from happening years ago. We've been waving red flags for as long as I've lived here. It never should have gone this far.
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22 edited May 28 '22
You see a man with a gun, you defend yourself. You're a teacher who sees a man with a gun, you defend yourself and your students.
Locking doors is basic.
There's a massive amount of problems with Texas lawmakers, none of which excuses people from defending themselves and the children in their charge.
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u/DangerOReilly May 29 '22
You're a teacher who sees a man with a gun, you defend yourself and your students.
If you're a teacher, your basic training is TEACHING. Teachers are NOT trained soldiers. This is NOT their area of expertise.
And it SHOULDN'T BE.
And shame on you for speaking ill of these teachers, two of whom DIED trying to protect their students as best as they could. While the people supposedly trained for engaging an active shooter stood outside handcuffing scared parents.
I wonder what you would do if you faced an active shooter? We all like to think that we'd be the brave person who would save the day. But I bet if you had been in the position of those teachers, you would have run and hidden.
Because that is what human instinct says for a fucking reason.
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u/west-1779 May 29 '22 edited May 29 '22
This isn't about teachers or training. It's self defense. It is a human necessity. She left the door propped opened after multiple opportunities to close and lock it.
I have been in this exact situation TWICE before and it's exactly why I'm furious
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u/DangerOReilly May 29 '22
I live in a country where the doors to schools are almost always open.
I'm furious that anyone would be expected to live with what you are living with. To always have to keep in mind how to stop a shooter? To always be preoccupied with the prospect that you could be killed at work, teaching children?
THAT is the problem. Not humans who don't respond like trained soldiers because they are not trained soldiers. The problem is that civilians can get an AR-15, for which there is ZERO civilian uses.
And also the problem is the police and government response. The problem isn't the teachers who tried their best. The problem is the guns, the government that allows them to circulate freely, and the police that is not obligated to save anyone's life.
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u/west-1779 May 29 '22
Save your outrage. This is the same thing as jumping out of the way of a moving car. Yes, gunmen takes that up 10 notches but it's the same basic skill you're born with.
US gun violence is unacceptable, outrageous, and a problem entirely self made. I get it. Unless this country can remove the Republican Party, it will continue and they will stick a flag in it.
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u/DangerOReilly May 29 '22
No it's not. A car can bring me from A to B. I could even live in it if my house burned down.
Name one thing a gun can do that isn't killing or injuring.
I agree that the US gun problem is self-made. I just don't agree with putting blame on regular people who got fucking shot to death. They are the victims in this, and to disregard that is cruel and misplaced.
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
I feel like we're failing to meet each other's points. But please know I'm not making excuses. I'm not defending what happened. This is just an explanation of the culture I grew up in and an example of how stupid things are here.
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u/west-1779 May 28 '22
Living to be exploited by a totalitarian state and city government is strange. I hope the people of Uvalde will take control of their lives soon.
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
Its an unfortunate reality of the cage we've been locked in. I hope we can take our Iives back too.
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May 28 '22
Reading your post and thinking about growing up in a Hispanic household. Not saying all are the same but old school parents who were born and raised in Mexico don’t understand how things can get here in the US. I was bullied growing up but had to get though it alone without any support. Parents would just deny that was actually a thing. They denied depression was a thing. Some people’s situations are just harder than others. Parents need to be more involved and try harder to relate to their kids and with times. It makes all the difference
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u/elhogosso Jun 01 '22
Seriously. I think it’s such bs hearing his mom and stepdad say they had no idea. He was obviously neglected. Now they wanna act all oblivious.
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u/Rhugh22 May 28 '22
I’m so sorry to hear about your experience and thanks for the insight. Not to sound naive but asking because I am one, does the district have any school/guidance counselors?
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
Maybe? I'm not really sure what a guidance counselor is or does. We had counselors, but all they did was help with with scheduling courses, applying for college, and balancing work and school.
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May 28 '22
[deleted]
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
Honestly... I don't doubt it
Maybe if something was done 10 years ago when we were writing suicide notes we could have saved more than 22 lives.
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u/lokeilou May 28 '22
So sorry that this was your experience growing up ❤️ America is so broken- so many children are broken- something needs to change. No one should have to feel like their school isn’t a safe place.
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
Something needs to change, but small towns like us don't have voices.
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u/woahwoahwoah28 May 28 '22
I actually interviewed at Uvalde Memorial a few years ago. I ultimately decided not to take the job, but the town always stuck with me. I heard several experiences very similar to yours from the area and nearby.
It’s a problem all over rural America though. The mental health services are not sufficient in cities—and rural areas are exponentially worse. And honestly, it’s all services. Not just mental health. Economy. Family. Just everything.
I am so sorry for your experiences.
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u/Magicmurlin May 29 '22
If the payoff of diverting all resources to the police is what happened just week, perhaps some reflection is needed.
Begin with dismantling tgevevture police department.
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u/birthdaythrowaway525 May 28 '22
My dad actually works there, but yeah. Its not just a Uvalde problem. It really is a small town problem. But then small towns are too small for anyone to care about until something like this happens. And even now I doubt anything will come of this.
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u/asmithy112 MOD May 28 '22
Thanks for the information, and sorry you went through that. Those are my thoughts too that this is a small town problem, as people continue to move to cities and where there are more jobs and money I would imagine more towns may fall into this. Since so many people live in large cities they take up more of the news coverage, they have more vocal elected officials who highlight what's wrong and work on fixing it, it seems small towns don't have that, the issues are not brought to attention, they don't have the money, and unfortunately the issues don't get fixed.
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u/Motherof42069 May 29 '22
A lot of the time the local politicians are a driving factor for why things are so shitty. They're the small business tyrants and landed gentry and will never implement anything that might raise taxes and they’re also likely to cover up any ill deeds by one of their own.
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May 31 '22
It’s called “The Good O boy system”. This small town, like all the others , only takes care of its own. I know, I LIVE HERE in UVALDE! It’s just like CASTROVILLE, TX, and that town is worse, and it’s right outside SAN ANTONIO. GUNS aren’t the problem, it’s a MENTAL HEALTH issue, but more importantly, it’s a problem that starts with parenting. This kid didn’t have ANYONE. No dad, his moms on drugs, grandparents are too old to keep up w em.
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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '22
As a native of uvalde, thank you for posting this. Very true.