On May 24th, a shooting at Uvalde, Texas, rocked the community. What made the story worse is that it occurred at Robb Elementary School and killed several children. One of the instructors, Arnulfo Reyes, was shot during the event. He was in room 111 and saw his entire class murdered while he taught them.
Now, Reyes addresses the elephant in the room – what occurred inside Classroom 111.
Reyes started by discussing how petrifying it was to believe he might die during the incident. Not only did Reyes have his safety to worry about, but also the safety of all the students in his class. What haunted him most was how terribly mishandled everything turned out to be so much so that many children needlessly lost their lives.
The class awards were the day before the shooting. That is why the instructor believed that it would be a “good day.” He was even looking forward to giving out the honors, especially because several of his pupils were receiving them for the first time.
What he hadn’t anticipated was for it to be the absolute worst day of his life.
The teacher, who was visibly shaken, explained how the shooting started. According to him, he had just shown a movie to his class when they suddenly began hearing gunshots.
He stated, “The kids started asking out loud, ‘Mr. Reyes, what is going on?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. But let’s go ahead and get under the table and act like you’re asleep.’ As they were doing that … is about the time when I turned around and saw him standing there.”
The gunman who had entered the adjacent class, classroom 112, was heard firing in rapid succession. The student then began shooting at him. The teacher was hit twice: one bullet struck his arm and lung, while the other went into his back. Reyes claimed he pretended to be dead and began praying that the pupils would do likewise while the gunman was firing away.
A student in room 112 yelled out, and then he heard it: “Officer, we’re in here! We’re in here.”
That’s when the student returned to adjacent room 112. Reyes continued, “He got up from behind my desk, he walked over there and shot over there again.”
The atrocity took the lives of 19 youngsters and two instructors, including all 11 students in Reyes’s class.
Aside from the sadness he felt at losing his students, Reyes is angry at how the police didn’t do more to prevent the shooter. He says that he feels “absolutely” let down by these people who are meant to serve and protect citizens, especially children. The officers entered the classroom while gunshots were still happening for over an hour.
Reyes added, “After everything, I get more angry because you have a bulletproof vest. I had nothing. You’re supposed to protect and serve, there is no excuse for their actions. Nothing gets you ready for this. We trained our kids to sit under the table, and that’s what I thought at the time, but we set them up to be like sitting ducks.
You can give us all the training you want. But gun laws have to change. It won’t ever change unless you change the laws. ”
Although Reyes is presently treating his bodily injuries, he understands that his emotional scars would take much longer to mend.
