Texas School Shooting: Anderson Cooper comforts sobbing father as he recalls the moment he discovered his daughter died

When Angel Garza arrived at the scene of the Texas school shooting, his first instinct was to help. A trained medic, he approached a 10-year-old girl who had just emerged from the building covered head to toe in blood and asked her where she was hurt.

The girl explained she wasn’t hurt – the blood was from her best friend who was shot dead next to her while trying to call 911. Angel asked her for her friend’s name. She replied: ‘Amerie.’ It was then that Angel realized the blood he was looking at came from his own daughter, and that she was one of 19 children killed in the massacre.

Weeping and clutching Amerie’s portrait, Angel related the heartbreaking tale to Anderson Cooper live on CNN late Wednesday while standing outside Robb Elementary School in the small, southern city of Uvalde – the scene of America’s latest mass school shooting.

Through sobs of grief, Angel said Amerie had just celebrated her 10th birthday and had got a new cell phone – the one she used to try and call the cops as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos stormed into the school armed with a legally-purchased AR-15 rifle, which  he turned on the fourth-grade class and their teachers.

‘She was just trying to call authorities and I guess he just shot her. How do you look at this girl and shoot her? Oh, my baby. How do you shoot my baby?’ Garza said. ‘I just want people to know that she died trying to save her classmates. She just wanted to save everyone.’

In 90 minutes of terror that began around 11.30 am Tuesday, Ramos shot dead Amerie and 18 of her classmates – all aged under 11 – along with two of their teachers: Irma Garcia, 46, and Eva Mireles, 44. All of the dead came from a single classroom where Ramos barricaded himself before being shot dead by a Border Force agent around 1 pm.

Angel described Amerie as ‘the sweetest little girl who was a good student and always well-behaved for her family. ‘I just want to know what she did to be a victim,’ he questioned Wednesday. ‘She was so sweet… she was the sweetest little girl who did nothing wrong.

‘She listened to her mom and dad, she always brushed her teeth, she was creative, she made things for us, she never got in trouble in school.’

At an end-of-year awards ceremony just hours before she was shot and killed, Amerie had been named to the school’s honour roll.

The 10-year-old was also a beloved big sister, who’s little brother is heartbroken by her death.

‘We informed him that his sister is with God and that she will no longer be with us and of course, he just cried,’ Garza said when asked if Amerie’s brother knew she was dead.

Her mother, Kimberly Garcia, took to Facebook to address the family’s loss, saying it is incomprehensible.

‘Mommy loves you, mommy can’t sleep without you Mommy needs you, Amerie I can’t do this life without you. How am I supposed to live life without you? I will never understand. I love you and I’ll never be the same, ever again,’ Garcia penned.

In another post, she added: ‘My heart is completely shattered.’

Similarly to Garza, Texas sheriff’s deputy Felix Rubio was responding to Tuesday’s school massacre and was told his daughter was among the victims.

Felix Rubio was snapped clutching his wife Kimberly for support in Uvalde on discovering their beloved daughter Lexi, 10, was among 19 children murdered at Robb Elementary School by shooter Salvador Ramos.

The pain was clearly etched in Rubio’s face as he tried to comfort his wife. Even more heartbreakingly, he’d posed proudly with Lexi just hours before her death.

She had received a certificate for making the honour roll at Robb and beamed proudly with her parents for a photo that was to be the last snap ever taken of them.

At the ceremony, Lexi made the All-A honour roll and won the school’s good citizen award, her mother, Kimberly, wrote in a Facebook post.

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