Irma Garcia, TX Teacher Killed In Uvalde, Laid To Rest With Husband

UVALDE, TX — A Uvalde elementary school teacher killed while protecting her students from a gunman on May 24 was buried alongside her husband, who died two days later of what his family called “a broken heart,” on Wednesday — together in eternity, according to their beliefs, as they were from the moment of their first kiss in high school.

The story of Irma and Joe Garcia, who loved each other their entire adult lives and would've celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary later this month, swept the nation, becoming an undeniable reminder of how gun violence can tear through the fabric of a family.

Joe Garcia, 50, “pretty much fell over” after attending a memorial service for his wife on Thursday, the couple's nephew John Martinez told The New York Times.

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Officially his death was due to a heart attack, but "I truly believe Joe died of a broken heart," Debra Austin, Irma Garcia's cousin, wrote on a crowdfunding page, "and losing the love of his life of more than 25 years was too much to bear."

Nearly $2.8 million has been raised on GoFundMe for their four children, two of them teenagers not yet out of high school. Though donors from around the world eased their children's financial worry, their hearts will be another matter.

Heartbreak is found around every corner in Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were shot to death last week.

It hovers over every street and every block, and in every home as funerals begin for the teachers and the children, some of whose little bodies were so riddled by bullets from the gunman’s military-style assault rifle they could be identified only through DNA, so torn up that morticians skilled in facial reconstruction had to put them back together again.

The trauma and devastation suffered by the Garcia children — Cristian, 23; Jose, 19; Lyliana, 15; and Alysandra, 12 — will be the sort shared by the other families whose loved ones didn’t come home from school that day and, if they did, are saddled with nightmarish memories mental health experts say could haunt them for years.

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The Garcias were an “all-American family,” John Martinez told The Washington Post of his aunt, uncle and cousins. “They’re great people. The entire family, they’re all great people. They don’t deserve this.”

In the starkest and darkest sense possible, the killings of 48-year-old Irma Garcia and the 19 children — for whom hiding under the desks and playing dead is as rote a skill as reciting the ABCs — are all-American, too.

Mass shootings don’t happen with near the frequency, or even much at all, in other developed countries, according to Giffords and other groups that aim to stem gun violence. A recent peer-reviewed study, published in March in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, confirms that.

From 1998 to 2019, researchers said, the United States accounted for 73 percent, or 101 of 139 mass shootings, that accounted for 816 deaths. France was a far-distant second with eight mass shootings, leading to 179 deaths.

Guns are deeply embedded in U.S. culture, with 4 in 10 adults saying they own a firearm, according to a June 2021 Pew Research Center survey. A Pew Research survey earlier that year showed nearly half (48 percent) think gun violence is a major problem that ranks below affordable health care, cited by 56 percent of respondents as the nation’s top problem, but in a statistical tie with the federal budget deficit, violent crime, illegal immigration and the coronavirus pandemic.

Pew’s April 2021 survey showing 37 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats support assault weapon bans was taken right after a string of mass shootings: a killing spree that left eight massage parlor workers dead in Atlanta, a grocery store shooting in Boulder, Colorado, where 10 people were killed, and a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that left eight people dead.

Still, No Change In Gun Laws

The nation’s gun laws remained intact and unchanged. In the days before the Uvalde massacre, Salvador Rolando Ramos, newly 18, legally bought two AR-style rifles, shot his grandmother and went to Robb Elementary School, where Garcia and 20 others died in a hail of gunfire, authorities said.

The schoolhouse killings have amplified calls for gun reform, a steep climb even when emotions are high. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who attended the Garcias’ funeral, said in a statement that the country “must unite as a country against this senseless cycle of violence, act immediately to protect our children, and make sure that every child and every educator feels safe in our schools.”

“Stuff like this should not be happening in schools,” Martinez, the Garcias’ nephew, told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s wrong. It’s not OK.”

Maggie Mireles Thomas is determined something good will come from the death of her sister, teacher Eva Mireles. She told CBS News she met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, imploring him to work to tighten regulations that made it so easy for Ramos to acquire his guns and ammunition.

“There is no reason why this type of weapon should be among us people here. Governor Abbott said he would be working on laws to change these things, and I expect to see that change," she said.

“I want everyone to remember her. To remember her name, remember her face and remember that she was a hero,” the fallen teacher’s sister said.

Desirae Garza, whose 10-year-old niece, Amerie Jo, was buried Tuesday in a customized coffin drawing attention from her terrified last moments to the things that brought her joy, is incredulous that Ramos was so easily able to buy an assault weapon and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

“You can’t purchase a beer, and yet you can buy an AR-15,” Garza told The New York Times. “It’s too easy."