A teacher who died a “hero” trying to protect her young pupils is among the victims identified in the Texas school shooting that saw 21 people killed on Tuesday.
Teachers Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia have been named by their families as among those killed in the attack on Robb Elementary School.
The identities of five of the 19 child victims have been confirmed so far: they are Amerie Jo Garza, 10, Makenna Lee Elrod, 10, eight-year-old Uziyah Garcia, Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, and Jose Flores, 10.
Ms Mireles’s husband is an officer with the school district’s police force which is now investigating the massacre that began late in the morning on Tuesday and ended with the gunman being shot dead.
Confirming the teacher’s death in Facebook posts, her cousin and grandmother said they were devastated at the loss and furious over the gun violence that has gripped the country.
"My beautiful cousin! Such a devastating day for us all! My heart is shattered into a million pieces," Arizmendi Mireles, her cousin, said.
Ms Mireles was a bilingual special education teacher with 17 years of experience as an educator, and taught fourth-grade children in the school.
Describing herself on the school’s website, she said she was a mother of a college graduate and that she loved “running, hiking” with her “fun and loving” family.
Tuesday’s shooting is the deadliest in a US primary school in almost a decade, since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults were killed.
The shooter, named as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was wearing body armour and had a handgun and a rifle, all of which are commercially available in the state of Texas, which expanded access to guns as recently as last year.
The incident has rocked Uvalde, a small town of around 16,000 residents situated 130km (80 miles) west of San Antonio.
Grieving the death of her niece, Ms Mireles’s aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado demanded stricter gun laws and said rifles should not be so easily available.
"I’m furious that these shootings continue. These children are innocent. Rifles should not be easily available to all. This is my hometown, a small community of less than 20,000. I never imagined this would happen to especially loved ones," Ms Martinez Delgado said in a statement.
"All we can do is pray hard for our country, state, schools, and especially the families of all," the statement said.
Ms Mireles’ husband was involved in an active shooter drill at the Uvalde high school just two months ago. The chilling pictures shared on his Facebook page show Mr Ruiz and his fellow officers posing as active shooters while students played dead on the floor.
The second adult victim of the shooting, Ms Garcia, was confirmed dead by her nephew John.
“My tia did not make it, she sacrificed herself protecting the kids in her classroom, i beg of you to keep my family including all of her family in y’all’s prayers , Irma Garcia is her name and she died a hero,” tweeted her nephew.
“She was loved by many and will truly be missed.”
The identities of the child victims of the shooting are continuing to emerge, with the deaths of eight-year-old Uziyah and Xavier, 10, confirmed by their families late on Tuesday.
Uziyah’s grandfather Manny Renfro mourned the death of the eight-year-old, calling him “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known”.
“I’m not just saying that because he was my grandkid,” Mr Renfro said, adding Uziyah last visited him in San Angelo during spring break.
“We started throwing the football together and I was teaching him pass patterns. Such a fast little boy and he could catch a ball so good,” he recalled. “There were certain plays that I would call that he would remember and he would do it exactly like we practised.”
Lisa Garza, 54, of Arlington, Texas, said her cousin Xavier had been looking forward to a summer of swimming. The shooting took place two days before the end of the school year.
“He was just a loving 10-year-old little boy, just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,” she said. “He was very bubbly, loved to dance with his brothers, his mom. This has just taken a toll on all of us.”
Lamenting the lax gun laws in the country, she said: “We should have more restrictions, especially if these kids are not in their right state of mind and all they want to do is just hurt people, especially innocent children going to the schools.”
Angel Garza, the father of Amerie, confirmed her death in a Facebook post.
“Thank you everyone for the prayers and help trying to find my baby,” he wrote. “She’s been found. My little love is now flying high with the angels above. Please don’t take a second for granted. Hug your family. Tell them you love them. I love you Amerie jo. Watch over your baby brother for me.”
Jose Flores, 10, was also confirmed dead in the shooting by his uncle Christopher Salazar, reported the Washington Post. Hours before shooting, the boy had received an award for making the honour roll.
The fourth-grader, his uncle said, loved to play baseball and was a “very happy little boy”. “He was very smart,” Mr Salazar said. “He wasn’t a kid who would look for trouble.”
Hours after the shooting some families were still clueless about the whereabouts of their children, posting pictures of them online and begging for information.
Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air conditioning repairman, spend Tuesday night outside the school and hoped his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Eliajha Cruz Torres, was among the survivors.
He drove to the scene after receiving a tearful and terrifying call from his daughter shortly after the first reports that an 18-year-old gunman had opened fire at the school.
“I hope she is alive,” Mr Cruz said. “They are waiting for an update.”
In the wake of the massacre, Joe Biden demanded Congress take action to control guns, asking: “Where in God’s name is our backbone?” The president said a ban on assault-style weapons should be renewed as a matter of “common sense”.
