On the afternoon of July 10, Lalo Castillo, a craggy-faced and sturdy 76-year-old, arrived at the northeast corner of Robb Elementary School in southwest Uvalde, where neighbors and acquaintances began assembling for the largest political protest his hometown had seen in 50 years. Long ago, he’d studied reading and math in Robb’s classrooms, his childhood home just a quarter-mile away; almost as long ago, he’d helped lead a student uprising here that reshaped his city. Now, out front of the 67-year-old school—a cluster of old low-slung brick buildings plus a newer addition, nestled in a neighborhood of metal-roofed casitas and pothole-ridden roads—he watched the crowd swell past 500.
“I was glad to see young people, children, older people, white people, all kinds of folks that are joining,” Castillo said. “It brought back a lot of memories—particularly beginning at Robb.”
Around the school’s welcome sign that day, a second gathering sprawled: a makeshift memorial overflowing with weathered teddy bears, bright flowers, handwritten letters, and white crosses. Affixed to a nearby side wall, just visible over yellow police tape and a temporary fence with black privacy mesh, a banner still blared the school slogan: “Together We Rise.” The windows of the newer building were all gone, with plywood now blocking from view the place where all the killing happened.
About seven weeks prior to the protest, an 18-year-old high school dropout—who’d been labeled by friends “the school shooter” and threatened girls online—was allowed to purchase two AR-style rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammo. On May 24, the killer, who’d attended Robb himself, shot his grandmother at a house directly behind the lot where Castillo grew up. The shooter then crashed his grandma’s pickup into a paved ditch on the school’s west side, hopped a 5-foot fence, entered an exterior door that should have been locked, entered a classroom door that should have been locked, and finally unleashed hell on earth, pulverizing and, in two instances, even decapitating 19 fourth-graders and two teachers with a weapon designed for just such purposes.
Multiple local cops arrived on the scene within a few minutes. The law enforcement response would swell
