Irma Garcia’s family was already reeling from her death in the Texas school shooting that targeted her fourth grade classroom and killed her co-teacher and 19 students.
Then, just two days after the attack, her grieving husband collapsed and died at home of a heart attack, a family member said.
Joe Garcia, 50, left flowers at his wife’s memorial Thursday morning in Uvalde, Texas, and returned home, where he “practically fell” to his death, his nephew John Martinez told The New York Times. .
Married for 24 years, the couple had four children.
Martinez told The Detroit Free Press that the family was struggling to understand that while the couple’s oldest son was training for combat in the Marine Corps, it was his mother who was shot and killed.
“Things like this shouldn’t be happening in schools,” he told the newspaper.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio and Rushing-Estes-Knowles Funeral Home confirmed Joe Garcia’s death to The Associated Press. The AP was unable to independently reach members of the Garcia family on Thursday.
The motive for the massacre, the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut, remained under investigation, and authorities said the 18-year-old gunman had no known criminal or mental health history.
The rampage rocked a country already tired of gun violence and tore apart the community of Uvalde, a majority-Latino city of about 16,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border.
The Garcias loved to barbecue, Irma, 48, wrote in an online letter to her students at Robb Elementary School. Irma liked to listen to music and travel to Concan, a community along the Frio River, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Uvalde.
The couple’s eldest son, Cristian, is a Marine. The couple’s other son, Jose, attends Texas State University. His eldest daughter, Lyliana, is in the second year of high school, while his younger sister is in the seventh grade.
The school year, scheduled to end Thursday, was Irma’s 23rd year of teaching, all at Robb. She was previously named the school’s Teacher of the Year and she received the 2019 Trinity Award for Excellence in Education from Trinity University.
“Ms. Irma Garcia was my mentor when I started teaching,” colleague Allison McCullough wrote when Irma was named teacher of the year. “The sheer amount of knowledge and patience that she showed me was life changing.”
For five years, Irma co-taught with Eva Mireles, who was also killed.
The suspect, Salvador Ramos, was inside the classroom for more than an hour before he was killed in a shootout with police, authorities said.
“Welcome to fourth grade! We have a wonderful year ahead of us!” Mireles wrote last year in an online letter to incoming students.
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Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed.
Reference-www.ctvnews.ca