Specialists from local funeral homes try to recreate the faces of children destroyed by the gunshots
For more than a century, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Uvalde (Texas) has been the cornerstone of that city’s Catholic community with deep Mexican roots, but none of the parish priests have ever had the immense task that will fall from today. on the shoulders of Father Eduardo Morales: twelve funerals in one week. “It’s like a big funeral that never ends,” Father Eddie told NBC with a bitter laugh that he had to explain. “I laugh so as not to cry,” he clarified.
Where there was not even room for black humor were the two funeral homes that have been serving as a burning chapel since this Tuesday. Little white coffins, far from the cameras that have already made the parents of the 19 children killed at Robb Elementary School last Tuesday, by an elusive and cruel teenager who had been unable to graduate that week because of his failed school.
To show them to their parents, embalmers have had to do many facial reconstructions using thanato-aesthetic techniques. For example, Salvador Ramos left the corpses destroyed, who started by shooting his grandmother in the face and his wrist no longer trembled when he entered the school.
One of his first fatalities in fourth grade where only one girl got out alive was Ameri Jo Garaza. Her stepfather, a paramedic, helped the blood-soaked survivor girl who thought she was injured when he realized there was no bullet hole. “She told me it was her best friend’s blood… Ameri,” Alfredo Garza burst into tears inconsolably in front of the CNN cameras, hugging a portrait of the girl.
“It was so sweet! He had a heart of gold. How can you shoot a face like that?” he wondered, tearfully. The portrait was taken that same morning, when he received one of the awards for the end of the year.
The little girl had just turned ten in May. His parents gave him the cell phone he had asked for so much, without suspecting that it would cost him his life. When she heard the gunman say, “You’re all going to die,” the girl called 911 and was shot in the face.
His wake was exactly the first this week at Hill Crest Funeral Home, which is next to the school where he died. Two of his employees wanted to help Ramos when they saw him crash into the ditch with his grandmother’s station wagon, but the boy was shot through the passenger window and they fled.
As if to atone for the guilt of not having prevented the massacre, the funeral home has offered its services to the victims free of charge, imitated by the other funeral home in town that cannot keep up this week.
Like the florist, who has had to get people from other parts of the state to make the flower arrangements they order. All of Uvalde this week is a parade of tears from every corner of Texas. Many want to pay tribute to the children and show their solidarity with the families, determined to remember who their children were. Obedient children, laughing, with dreams of their own that already showed signs of who they would be in life, stolen straight away with a semi-automatic AR-15, bought legally, like most of those who unleash massacres in the US.
Since then, there have been 17 mass shootings that have failed to make local headlines, according to the Gun Violence Archive that follows them. A total of 13 dead and 70 injured in less than a week, 230 mass shootings so far this year.
Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, whose political life has been marked by the Newtown school massacre, is leading legislative efforts to enact some sort of legislation restricting gun sales without being expected to do so. House of Commons passes, where his party has a majority. The battle for arms is as lost as the lives mourned in Uvalde this week.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met in the White House on Tuesday with United States Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recent tensions. in the region. of the Indo-Pacific. New Zealand is no stranger to discussion and debate about gun bans. New Zealand Attorney General David Parker announced in March 2019 that the New Zealand government would ban semi-automatic rifles following the Christchurch massacre. The New Zealand prime minister told Biden that “anything” that both countries can share “that can be of value” will be beneficial.
Source: La Verdad
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