For the first time in 30 years, Avila will not be returning to school as classes resume Tuesday in the small, southwest Texas town. The start of school will be different for her, as it will be for other survivors of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, where 21 people lost their lives, with an emphasis on healing, both physical and mental. Some have chosen virtual education, others private school. Many will return to Uvalde School District campuses, though Robb Elementary itself will never reopen. “I’m trying to make sense of it all,” Avila said in an August interview, “but it’s never going to make sense.” A scar on her torso brings her to tears as a permanent reminder of the horror she endured with her 16 students as they waited in their classroom for an hour for help while a gunman slaughtered 19 children and two teachers in two adjacent classrooms. Minutes before she felt the sharp pain of the bullet piercing her gut and colon, Avila made the students move away from the walls and windows and toward her. A student lined up by the door for her break had just said something was happening outside: People were running — and screaming. As she knocked on the classroom door to catch the lock, her students took their well-practiced locking positions. Moments later, a gunman burst into their fourth-grade wing and began spraying bullets before eventually reaching rooms 111 and 112. In Room 109, Avila repeatedly texted for help, according to messages reviewed by The Associated Press. First at 11:35 am. in the text to her family that she says was meant for the teacher group chat. Then at 11:38 in a message to the vice principal of the school. At 11:45 a.m., she responded to a text from the school counselor asking if her classroom was on lockdown with, “I’ve been shot, send help.” And when the manager assured her that help was on the way, she simply replied, “Help.” “Yes they are coming,” the manager wrote at 11:48 am It is unclear whether her messages were passed on to police. District officials did not respond to requests for comment about the actions taken to contact law enforcement on May 24, and an attorney for then-Principal Mandy Gutierrez was unavailable for comment. According to a legislative committee report that described a poor police response, nearly 400 local, state and federal officers stood in the hallway of the fourth-grade wing or outside the building for 77 minutes before some finally entered adjacent classrooms and killed the gunman. . Lawmakers also took a lax approach to lockdowns — which have happened frequently — and security concerns, including problems with door locks. State and federal investigations into the shooting are ongoing. The district is working to complete new security measures, and the school board in August fired the district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo. Residents say it remains unclear how — or even if — trust between the community and officials can be rebuilt, even as some call for more accountability, better police training and stricter gun safety laws. Avila remembers hearing the ominous bursts of rapid fire, then silence, then the voices of officers in the hallway yelling, “Crossfire!” and later more officers standing nearby. “But still no one came to help us,” he said. As Avila lay motionless, unable to speak loud enough to be heard, some of her students waved and shook her. She wanted the strength to tell them she was still alive. A light flashed at their window, but no one recognized themselves. Fearing it was the gunman, the students moved away. “The little girls closest to me kept petting me and saying, ‘It’s going to be okay Miss. We love you, we miss you,” Avila said. Finally, at 12:33 a window broke in her classroom. Officers arrived to evacuate her students — the last to be released in the area, according to Avila. With her remaining strength, Avila stood up and helped the students into chairs and tables and through the window. Then, holding her side, she told an officer she was too weak to jump herself. He went in through the window to get her out. “I never saw my children again. I know they climbed out the window and I could hear them saying, ‘Run, run, run!’” Avila said. She remembers being taken to the airport, where a helicopter took her to a hospital in San Antonio. He was in and out of care until June 18th. Avila later learned that a student in her class suffered shrapnel wounds to the nose and mouth, but had since been released from medical treatment. He said other students helped their injured classmates until officers arrived. “I’m very proud of them because they were able to stay calm for a whole hour when we were in there terrified,” Avila said. As her students prepare to return to school for the first time since that traumatic day, Avila is on the road to recovery, walking up to eight minutes at a time on the treadmill for physical therapy and going to counseling. She looks forward to teaching again someday. Outside a shuttered Robb Elementary, a memorial to the dead overflows the entrance gate. Teachers from across Texas stopped this summer to pay their respects and think about what they would do in the same situation. “If I’m going to survive, I have to make sure they survive first,” said Olga Oglin, a 23-year-old educator from Dallas, her voice breaking. “Whatever happens to one student at our school, it just happens to one of my kids,” Olgin said, adding that as the person who greets parents, students and staff at the door in the mornings, he will likely be the first person which will be shot. . Ofelia Loyola, who teaches elementary school in San Antonio, visited with her husband, high school teacher Raul Loyola. She was baffled by the delayed response from law enforcement, as seen in security and police video. “They are all children. It doesn’t matter how old they are, you protect them,” he said. Last week, Avila and several of her students got together for the end-of-the-year party they didn’t get to make in May. They played pool at a country club and she gave them each a bracelet with a small cross to remind them that “God was with us that day and they are not alone,” she said. “We’ve always talked about being kind, being respectful, taking care of each other — and they were able to do that that day,” Avila said. “They looked after each other. They took care of me.”
This story has been updated to correct that Uvalde is in southwest Texas, not the state’s southeast.
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