A 10-year-old survivor of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was left terrified after allegedly being racially profiled during a traffic stop on her way home from a rally for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the shooting on 24 May at Robb Elementary School.
Caitlyne Gonzales, a student at Robb Elementary School at the time of the 24 May massacre that killed 21, was in the car with her family heading back from the recent rally when they were blocked by three Texas state trooper SUVs, according to reporter John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post.
Caitlyne “clenched her teeth and crossed her arms,” Mr Cox wrote, adding that she was “terrified”.
“It was three days before school started, and I’d spent all summer with Caitlyne,” Mr Cox tweeted on Tuesday. “She knew the police took 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Robb and, like many people in Uvalde, Caitlyne deeply resented them for it. Her friends died, she believed, because they failed.”
Mr Cox wrote that before the traffic stop, it had been “the best day she’d had in weeks”. The family had stopped on the way home from Mr O’Rourke’s rally to visit Caitlyne’s grandfather in Eagle Pass, Texas.
“She took a selfie with him, got free shirts, ate fried chicken after,” Mr Cox wrote on Twitter. “Then, on the way home, police lights flashed behind her family’s car.”
When they were stopped by the police, Caitlyne was asleep.
Mr Cox wrote that her father reacted by saying “I knew it”.
“Immigrants who shared his skin color and crossed the border illegally often traveled from Eagle Pass to Uvalde,” Mr Cox noted.
“Oh, we got a whole carload, huh?” Mr Cox quoted the trooper as saying as he approached the vehicle.
The trooper claimed that Caitlyn’s father Nef Gonzalez had been speeding. According to Mr Cox, he had been driving just 5mph above the limit.
“Your kids? Your children?” the officer asked and pointed.
“Well, yeah. She’s one of the victims, and she’s afraid of,” Mr Gonzalez began to say. “Robb victim, so she’s a little bit nervous.”
The trooper smiled and waved, but Caitlyne didn’t return the greeting. The officer said he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable and allowed the family to move on with a warning.
Another officer asked if the family had only visited Eagle Pass for the day and if they were from Uvalde originally.
“They have us posted at the schools,” the trooper said.
“Caitlyne silently gnawed on her fingernails,” Mr Cox wrote.
“Three of them – for a speeding ticket,” Mr Gonzalez noted after the incident. He was frustrated that the tag showing that he had served in the US Army hadn’t convinced the officers to act differently.
The family saw one of the trooper SUV’s later during their drive home. It said “K-9” on the back.
“Oh my god,” Caitlyne said.
“They were profiling, that’s it,” Mr Gonzalez said.
According to Mr Cox, both of the officers appeared to be white. When they got home, he said: “Caitlyne slumped onto a couch, staring at her phone until she snapped at Camila for moving her ‘Beto’ bumper sticker, her face contorted into a scowl. Her parents reminded her what a special time they’d had, but now, none of that mattered to her”.
On 24 May, Caitlyne was across the hall from the gunman at Robb Elementary School.
She told KERA News that she lost one of her best friends in the shooting and that her class could get to safety when a SWAT team broke a window, allowing the children to climb outside.
