Eva Mireles—who had been teaching for 17 years— loved “what she did at the school, and she put her heart in everything that she did.”
Eva Mireles was one of the two teachers that were shot dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Mireles' husband, a police officer, reportedly received a call from his wife, informing him about the shooter. Her husband, Ruben Ruiz, had his gun taken away, was detained, and escorted off the scene after he got the call from his wife, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw.
This was revealed during the Texas Senate’s hearing on police response to the Uvalde school shooting, per TODAY. Mireles' husband is a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) officer.
“We got an officer, Officer Ruiz, whose wife had called him and said she (had) been shot and she’s dying,” McCraw said in a video shared by PBS News Hour. “What happened to him as he tried to move forward into the hallway, he was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.”
Lydia Martinez Delgado told the New York Times that her niece—a fourth-grade teacher—died protecting her students. Her daughter, whom she shares with her husband, took to Facebook to pen a heartbreaking tribute after her mother's death.
“Mom, you are a hero. I keep telling myself that this isn’t real. I just want to hear your voice,” she wrote on Facebook, adding, “I want everything back. I want you to come back to me mom. I miss you more than words can explain.”
NEW: Testimony today from the Texas Dept of Public Safety revealed that Eva Mireles, a Uvalde teacher, called her husband to say she’d been shot and was dying. When he tried to save her, he was detained, had his gun taken away, and was escorted away. https://t.co/9Em06tGkFG
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) June 21, 2022
After the tragic shooting, Amber Ybarra, Mireles’ cousin, remembered her as “a hero.”
“No one walked into that school yesterday knowing that anything like this was possible,” Ybarra shared, adding that Mireles—who had been teaching for 17 years— loved “what she did at the school, and she put her heart in everything that she did.”
Meanwhile, McCraw, who was testifying during the Texas Senate hearing, called the police response an “abject failure.” He also mentioned that “one of the biggest problems” during the shooting was “not only the lack of leadership, but also the misinformation that’s being provided.”
“What officers were being told was, ‘The subject is contained, the chief is in the classroom or the office, negotiating or talking to the subject. So everyone is treating it, that comes in afterwards, you’re in the hallway and you’re looking at it, and you’re being told this, there’s no reason to discount that,” he stated. “Now, certainly if you heard, ‘Well, wait a minute, we’re getting 911 calls from children in the classroom.’ And we didn’t know the timeline.”
Eva Mireles, a Uvalde teacher who was killed in the shooting, apparently spoke with her husband — a school district police officer — as the incident was unfolding. Crucially, this seems to confirm that police *did* have info on what was going on inside. https://t.co/LvtjdwA6U1
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 2, 2022
Also, the ongoing investigations hope to reveal the real reason why officials waited an hour before they attempted to take the gunman down.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=13887&v=IAawESxplOQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/24/us/shooting-robb-elementary-uvalde
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Elsa
