It had been an uneventful morning on Tuesday for retirees Maria and Gilberto Gallegos.
Mr. Gallegos, 82, was in the back yard of their home on Diaz Street in Uvalde, Texas, and Ms. Gallegos, 76, was out front watering her flowers when the couple heard two gun blasts directly across the street.
The gunman had just shot Celia Martinez Gonzales, his grandmother, in the face in the house where he had been living with her. One of the bullets hit her near her right eye. The other round missed her, according to what Mr. and Mrs. Gallegos told Gilbert, their son. (They did not respond to calls seeking an interview.)
All of a sudden, the gunman came bounding out of the front door, which he had left open, with a backpack and a duffel bag, and he got into his grandmother’s truck that was sitting in the home’s white gravel driveway, the son said.
“He didn’t know how to drive, so he is having a hard time getting the truck into gear,” Gilbert Gallegos said. “He was just revving, pushing down on the gas. Finally, he peels out, and the tires are throwing pebbles all over.”
At that point, the grandmother walked out of her house, her face streaming with blood. But her gait was steady. “She says in Spanish to my parents, ‘Look what happened,’” Mr. Gallegos said. “None of them knew if he was going to come back and finish the job.”
Consequently, he said, his father took Ms. Gonzales to the back yard of his home and applied pressure to her wound to try to staunch the bleeding. Meanwhile, Ms. Gallegos called 911 — first at 11:33 a.m. and then two minutes later.
“With all the adrenaline, she felt it was taking too long,” the son said, adding that Ms. Gonzales “was coherent and talking. She’s tough.”
The police soon arrived, followed by an ambulance. But before that, Maria and Gilberto Gallegos and Ms. Gonzales started to hear gunfire in the area of Robb Elementary School.
