Not many people are shot twice with an AR-15 during a mass shooting and live to talk about it, but Arnulfo Reyes has. And we should all listen to what he has to say.
Reyes was the lone survivor in Room 111 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, when 19 fourth graders, two teachers and a gunman were killed, and 17 others injured, on May 24, 2022.
At the one-year anniversary of the shooting, we are rightly remembering the dead who were senselessly taken from this world. But the injured must be remembered as well, and not lost in the assumption that once they were released from the hospital they went about their lives as before.
Many are caught between life and death - not gone, but not really here. That’s Reyes, 46, who spends most days sitting in his beige recliner, suffering from the horrible aftermath of that day, both physically and mentally. He lives alone in a small and somewhat cluttered home, where he keeps the blinds down, with just his chihuahua puppy named Chuy to keep him company.
With what strength he has, Reyes is doing what he can to push for common sense gun laws, and we applaud his efforts. He is a testament to the necessity to change our nation’s laws to protect people from the violence of mass shooters that is terrorizing us.
We visited with Reyes at his modest Uvalde home Friday, after he had just returned from the town square, where he had placed several 10-foot flagpoles waving bright orange flags. The color represents those killed or wounded by gun violence.
If only legislators and lawmakers all over the country had been there to see him. If only they took the issue as seriously as he does. Sadly, as the Texas Legislature winds up its last days in Austin, Reyes is losing hope that any new gun restrictions will be passed. Still, he’s pushing for two significant changes: raising the legal age to purchase most AR-style rifles from 18 to 21, and the institution of a “red flag” law allowing authorities to remove guns from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Those are two simple laws that would not violate the intent of the Second Amendment and that could make us safer. Either may have stopped the rampage at Robb Elementary, and the second could have prevented last month’s shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall.
The Uvalde murderer bought one of his weapons on his 18th birthday days before the shooting. And he had a long history of known mental and behavioral issues, even being dubbed “school shooter” by some who encountered him. The Allen gunman had posted numerous threatening and racist statements online, including the cover of a personal notebook titled, “Diary of a Psychopathic Man Child,” and expressed a fascination with mass shootings.
“It’s hard to buy cigarettes, it’s hard to buy beer,” Reyes said, his words and gaze drifting off as he recollects some of the things you have to be 21 to purchase in Texas.
Reyes has little use of his left arm, which was nearly obliterated by one of the more than 100 rounds that the shooter fired at him and others. Forever deformed, his arm is now held in place with a metal rod, and it bears large scars from the many operations it took to reshape it. Some of the skin and flesh needed for that reconstruction was taken from his legs, which are also now scarred. He can still feel pieces of the bullet in his body after he was shot in the back as he laid on the classroom floor pretending to be dead. In all, he’s had 11 surgeries.
“I have my days,” he told me. “Sometimes I can sit here all day and not do anything. This was an OK day.”
Several flagpoles remained in the back of his red pickup truck, where the parents of one of the deceased children came by to take one to post themselves. It’s a personal project, he told us, a way to carry out his commitment to not let his students’ deaths be forgotten or in vain.
But inconceivably, he and other supporters of more restricted access to guns have an uphill battle. Since last year, not only has the Texas Legislature not passed any new gun restrictions, but laws have been loosened. And the bloodshed has continued.
Since the Uvalde shooting, there have been more than 400 mass shootings in this country, 48 of them in Texas, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A mass shooting is defined by four or more people injured or killed in a single incident. Among the most recent was the tragedy at the Allen mall on May 6, when eight people were killed and seven others injured.
“I used to be a big TV watcher,’ Reyes said. “I don’t watch TV anymore. Everything is just violence, violence, violence.”
He’s frustrated by the scripted refrain from opponents to gun restrictions, who say raising the age to buy an assault rifle or enacting a red flag law wouldn’t change anything.
“But how do we know?” Reyes asked. “How do we know if we don’t try?”
He said he struggles with survivor’s guilt.
“Sometimes it just stops me in my tracks,” he said. “I think about my students, if I were to see them what they would be telling me about their fifth grade year.”
And he struggles with anger at the law enforcement officers who stayed outside his classroom in the hallway for more than an hour before busting through his door and shooting the killer.
On the rare occasions Reyes leaves the house, he often gets sideways glances and awkward looks from others in the community.
“They avoid me or I try to avoid them,” he said. Some are kind enough to offer their condolences, but even that makes him feel uncomfortable.
Uvalde is a town clearly changed. People we spoke with talked of a division there between those who want to move on from the tragedy and those who can’t.
With its population of just 15,000, it seems everybody is just one or two degrees of separation from each other. Everybody seems to be related to someone who was killed or injured in the shooting, or knows someone who is.
Despite the “Uvalde Strong” signs placed throughout town as a symbol of unity, there are still some hard feelings there between the victims and others in the community. In advance of the anniversary, public officials want outsiders to stay away while organizers of prayer services are saying all are welcome. Parents of some of the deceased children still openly criticize the school district for what they call an ongoing lack of transparency.
The grandmother of the shooter, Celia Gonzales, whom he shot in the face before his rampage, keeps to herself. Signs telling the media to stay away are posted on her front lawn. Reached by phone, she declined to talk to us.Who can blame her?
She and other family members are being sued by Reyes, who says they were negligent in supervising the shooter, who we won’t name here. They “knew or should have reasonably known their son and grandson was at risk of harming himself or others,” according to the suit.
“There are a lot of mixed feelings here,” said Rachel Rangel, 65, assistant to Uvalde County Justice of the Peace Eulalio Diaz. She said the shooter’s grandfather has sat in her boss’s office, crying in disbelief at what his grandson did.
Diaz, who had the terrible job of acting as county coroner on the day of the shooting, said he won’t forget what he saw that day. While the public has seen widely publicized video footage of police lining the clean, school hallways, he remembers the scene inside the classrooms much differently.
“I see a red floor,” he said.
A member of the Uvalde school district’s Community Advisory Committee, Diaz said “this town is just scared.” He said his son recently told him, “every time I go somewhere I’m looking for where the exits are.”
Some residents have moved away. Those that have stayed are surrounded by inescapable and brightly painted murals of the victims on the sides of downtown buildings, their smiling faces and favorite hobbies forever memorializing their short lives.
Reyes said he won’t forget them. Or stop pressing for the laws he thinks may have prevented their heartbreaking deaths.
“We’re not done yet, " Reyes told us. “We’re going to keep on fighting.”
