The physique of Texas college shooter Salvador Ramos languished for practically a month within the morgue as his household squabbled over who was accountable — and Uvalde’s funeral houses refused to take care of him.
An post-mortem was carried out on Ramos’ physique on Might 27, three days after cops lastly ended the 18-year-old’s slaughter of 19 children and two academics at Robb elementary.
Nevertheless, Uvalde’s two funeral houses refused to the touch him — and Ramos’ stays had been finally saved 150 miles away in a morgue in Lockhart, Uvalde’s defacto coroner, Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz Jr., advised the Houston Chronicle.
“As soon as they received to him, the funeral houses on the town mentioned, ‘We don’t need to take care of him,’” mentioned Diaz, a magistrate additionally overwhelmed coping with the deaths of immigrants in a human-smuggling horror in June.
“Because the funerals for the victims had been happening, I used to be nonetheless coping with what to do with him. It was a worrying time.”
On the similar time, Ramos’ troubled, splintered household additionally squabbled over his stays, Diaz mentioned. The deranged teen had been residing along with his grandparents, and had shot his 66-year-old grandmother Celia Martinez Gonzales — who survived — earlier than beginning his college slaughter.
“It took three, three and a half weeks to get him launched to the household,” Diaz advised the Chronicle. “They had been preventing with one another.”
Ultimately, Fort Ridge in Crystal Metropolis — a minimum of 40 miles outdoors of Uvalde — dealt with Ramos’ funeral preparations.
Ramos was finally cremated even additional away, in a nondescript constructing on the sting of downtown San Antonio, greater than 80 miles outdoors of Uvalde, the Houston paper famous, with out giving an actual date.
The managing funeral director at one in every of Uvalde’s two funeral houses, Dashing-Estes-Knowles, confirmed that they refused to rearrange a service for Ramos.
“All of our employees grew up in Uvalde County and attended college in Uvalde County and imagine that everybody deserves a dignified and respectful funeral service,” Taylor Michelle Massey advised the paper.
“Nevertheless, within the weeks following the shootings of Might twenty fourth, we had been caring for 17 households … by means of what might be essentially the most tough time of their lives,” she mentioned.
“Beneath the circumstance, we didn’t really feel it might be acceptable or in the perfect curiosity of the households for which we had been caring to take custody of the stays of the person that brought about their ache.”
It might take as much as a yr for full post-mortem reviews to be accomplished for Ramos and his 21 victims, Diaz mentioned — partly as a result of the Bexar County medical expert additionally has to conduct 53 autopsies for the immigrants who died whereas being smuggled in a tractor-trailer in late June.
“That’s 75 additional folks added to their regular workload,” Diaz mentioned. “We’re three months in, and all I’ve received is the preliminary reviews.”
The Robb elementary slaughter was the second-deadliest college capturing in US historical past.
A number of investigations are nonetheless inspecting the disastrous police response which noticed cops ready greater than an hour to lastly gun down Ramos as dad and mom desperately tried to storm in themselves.
