Franchise Owner Gaspar Hernandez sits with the thank-you letters he received from Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles and other teachers in Uvalde just weeks before the shooting Friday at the Golden Corral Buffet & Grill on North Drive. Garcia and Mireles along with 19 children were killed on Tuesday after a gunman barricaded himself in their 4th grade classroom at Robb Elementary School. (Denise Cathey/Brownsville Herald)
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A horror on the magnitude of what took place at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24 is felt around the world.
That includes Brownsville, where Gaspar Hernandez, owner of the Golden Corral franchise here, has a personnel connection to the school and the 19 children and two teachers gunned down by a troubled teenager with an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle.
Hernandez’s sister, Mercedes Salas, teaches 4th grade math and science at Robb Elementary. Her classroom was opposite the classrooms where the gunman erased those lives in the span of an hour.
“My sister had her door locked,” Hernandez said. “That’s why she’s still here. I think if they would have followed the protocol those kids could have been saved. The door was open to begin with. All doors should be closed and the protocols is for them to lock their doors when they’re teaching.”
Salas, deeply traumatized by the event and receiving counseling, told her brother she can still smell the gunpowder and hear the screams of children, making it very difficult to sleep. Salas is in her 11th year at Robb Elementary, according to the school’s website, though after this she’s not sure she can keep teaching, Hernandez said, adding that he talks to his sister “every day and every night.”
“I’m going to go see her on Tuesday,” he said.
Hernandez has an additional connection to the tragedy. Three weeks ago he donated money to Robb Elementary so the school could hire a motivational speaker to help prime the kids for upcoming STAAR tests. He still has the letter from the 4th graders and their teachers thanking him for the donation, which Hernandez said is just his way of “investing in the future.”
“There’s a lot of evil in the world and I just try to do good,” he said.
One of the slain teachers was Irma Garcia, whose husband of 24 years, Joe, died of a heart attack on May 26, shortly after dropping off flowers at her memorial, leaving behind four children and further compounding an already unfathomable loss.
Hernandez said reading the thank-you letter and seeing the names on it now breaks his heart. At the same time, he cherishes it as something to remember the victims by, he said.
“Just having that little treasure that I have, at least I have a piece of them with me,” Hernandez said.
Gaspar Hernandez holds up the thank-you letter he received from Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles and their class Friday at the Golden Corral Buffet & Grill on North Drive. (Denise Cathey/Brownsville Herald)
