About a dozen children remain hospitalized in the cities of Uvalde and San Antonio, Texas, after being injured in the shooting at Robb Elementary School on Monday, in which 19 students and two teachers were also killed, local authorities reported. .
The injured were taken by school buses, ambulances and helicopters to various hospitals in the Uvalde and San Antonio areas.
The Texas Department of Public Safety reported Monday night the deaths of 19 children and two teachers, in total.
State Senator Roland Gutiérrez had reported shortly before the death of four children who were in serious condition.
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Students and their families at a meetinghouse in Uvalde, Texas, where they were taken after the shooting at Robb Elementary School, on May 24, 2022. MARCO BELLO / REUTERS
Relatives of Eva Mireles, who taught at Robb Elementary School, confirmed that she was killed in Monday's shooting.
Her aunt, Lydia Martinez Delgado, told The New York Times that
she was killed while she was trying to protect her student from her.
Mireles, who had been teaching in the Uvalde school district for 17 years, was married and the mother of one child.
Martinez remembered her as a proud teacher of her Latino community who enjoyed taking walks in the fresh air.
A 66-year-old teacher and a 10-year-old girl are in critical condition at the Uvalde University Hospital, where two 9- and 10-year-old girls were also admitted in good condition.
Other minors were taken to hospitals in San Antonio.
Authorities have not yet said how many victims there were in total, including all the injured, or what their identities are.
Although it is also not known exactly how old they were, the school housed students in second, third and fourth grade, ranging from 6 to 11 years of age in general.
"I can't believe this is happening and here in Uvalde, I can believe this is happening in New York, but not here," a neighbor who witnessed the strong police mobilization told Noticias Telemundo.
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Most members of the Uvalde community are of Hispanic origin, including 80% of the children who attend the 600-student elementary school.
The town has about 25,000 inhabitants and 73% of them are Latino, according to the Census.
"I've been very scared for hours"
Desperate parents appealed to authorities and the general public via social media to find their missing children after the shooting.
Eva Hernández posted a photo of her son Rojelio Torres on Twitter while waiting for information to contact him.
The father of Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez, a 10-year-old student at Robb Elementary School, said he hasn't seen his daughter since the massacre at her high school and asked the community for help locating her, the Texas Rangers said.
"In the morning when the shooter incident was happening at school, Anabelle's mother called me to let us know what was happening," Esmeralda Rodríguez, Rodríguez's stepmother, told Noticias Telemundo.
"When we spoke to the mother again, if Anabelle was fine, she said she couldn't find her. She's not in the hospital in Uvalde, she's not in the Civic Center, we don't know where she is, we're going to go to San Antonio to hospitals to look for her," he added.
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"I've been very scared for hours," said the father, Jessie Rodriguez.
School authorities reported that due to the attack, which occurred two days before the end of the cycle,
county schools will not open on Wednesday or Thursday.
The Mexican consulates in Eagle Pass and San Antonio have contacted the Texas authorities to find out if there were any Mexican nationals affected in the shooting.
"The Government of Mexico strongly condemns this act of violence that has cost the lives of several minors, thereby harming multiple families, in a majority Hispanic population," the Mexican government said in a statement Monday night.
