Funerals Begin for Uvalde Children Killed in Shooting
2022-06-01
LRC
TXT
大字
小字
滚动
全页
1Two children were buried on Monday in Uvalde, Texas on what would have been the start of their summer vacation.
2They were the first burials among 19 students and two teachers killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School last week.
3People gathered to mourn 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home.
4The funeral home is across the street from the school where she was killed.
5Others went to remember Maite Rodriguez, also 10, at the town's other funeral home.
6The rest will be buried over the next two weeks while lawmakers and leaders are debating what to do about gun violence.
7Among the mourners at Amerie's funeral were Maite's family members.
8Like many people in the small town near the Mexican border, they were attending both.
9Some mourners at Amerie's wore purple clothing or carried a lilac flower, because her father Angel, said it was her favorite color.
10Amerie had just turned 10 and received a mobile telephone for her birthday.
11Friends said she tried to use the phone to call for help during the attack.
12Maite's family wore green shirts with an image showing Maite with angel wings.
13They stopped at the area where the gunman crashed his car before entering the school.
14"How did he walk for so long?" asked Juana Magaña, Maite's aunt.
15The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Sunday that it would look to study how law enforcement responded to the school shooting in Uvalde.
16The gunman, Salvador Ramos, entered the elementary school through an unlocked door around 11:40 on Tuesday morning and started shooting.
17Police officers followed him into the school within minutes.
18However, they waited for over an hour before entering a locked classroom and killing Ramos.
19Officials said Friday that students were calling the emergency phone number, 9-1-1, to ask for help throughout the attack.
20But the leading police officer at the school did not think the children were still being shot at the time.
21They said the police believed Ramos was hiding in a different classroom.
22The information raised new questions about whether lives were lost because officers did not act faster to stop the gunman.
23Officers from the U.S. Border Patrol finally went into the classroom and killed Ramos.
24Officials said Ramos had legally purchased two guns shortly before the school attack.
25He had just turned 18, permitting him to buy the weapons under federal law.
26During President Joe Biden's visit to Uvalde on Sunday, people shouted, "Do something," repeatedly.
27And Biden promised, "We will."
28On Monday, the American president said there may be support from both Republican and Democrat lawmakers to make it harder to buy powerful guns like the AR kind of gun that Ramos purchased.
29Biden told reporters, "The Second Amendment was never absolute."
30He added, "You couldn't buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.
31You couldn't go out and buy a lot of weapons."
32The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
33In 2008, the Supreme Court made its first ruling in 70 years related to the Second Amendment.
34The Court said an individual has the right to have a handgun in his or her home for self-defense.
35Previously, the Court had said people may only have guns in connection to service in a state militia.
36I'm Dan Friedell.