Fifty-year-old Joe Garcia laid flowers at a memorial to the victims of the shooter, who was identified by police as an 18-year-old local man, Salvador Ramos, on Thursday morning. At school, he murdered 19 children and two teachers with an assault rifle. One of them was Garcia’s wife Irma.
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When Garcia returned home, he “completely collapsed,” said John Martinez’s nephew, adding that his uncle was overwhelmed with grief after his wife’s death. The Garcias were 24 years old and had four children, the eldest of whom is 23 years old.
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A teacher with 20 years of experience, Garcia, was known as an indomitable optimist. “She just loved the people in her life,” Martinez said. When the police entered the classroom after the shooting, according to their nephew, they found Garcia’s body there, which “hugged the children in its arms basically to the last breath.”
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