'Part of me died': Teacher who survived Uvalde school shooting struggles with changes

UVALDE – Arnulfo Reyes hasn’t stepped into his classroom in nearly 750 days; no fourth grade students raising their hands and calling him Mr. Reyes at Robb Elementary School.

“A part of me died that day,” said Reyes, the sole survivor of Classroom 111.

Reyes survived the mass shooting that took the lives of 19 students and two fellow teachers on May 24, 2022.

He was first shot in the left arm and immediately fell to the floor, bleeding heavily. The assailant shortly afterward shot him in the back.

Reyes was dragged out of the classroom after the assailant was killed by a Border Patrol agent. The teacher was airlifted to San Antonio for treatment. Since then, he has had 14 surgeries and still doesn’t have full use of his bandaged arm.

Part of the pain he feels is the loss of his students and of being a teacher.

“That was my identity,” he said.

“That was the whole thing I was,” Reyes said while at Arnie’s Nursery and Gifts, the plant shop he owns in Uvalde. Some local customers and some from as far away as Austin sustain his business.

“I had a hard time with the acceptance that I was not going to go back into the teaching field because that’s what I had worked for all these years, was to be a teacher and to be good at it,” Reyes said.

He taught for 17 years, spending some time at charter schools, private schools and six years at Robb Elementary. Prior to becoming a fourth grade teacher at Robb, he taught preschool.

“I got to see my pre-K students come up to fourth grade, and it was rewarding, because I got to see them at 5 years old and now, they’re 10 years old.”

His face lit up while talking about his teaching career, getting to see the children’s smiling faces each day, and to watch them grow.

“Everything I do, I’m doing for them,” Reyes said. “I would not let my students die in vain.”

He now actively speaks out against gun violence on social media, speaks at protests and has conducted many interviews with the national media to share the story about his students.

As the sole survivor from one of the two classrooms where the mass shooting took place, Reyes said he believes it is his duty to speak out about the shooting and his new role as an activist.

“Sometimes it just feels lonely,” he said while his voice trembled.

People seem to stay away from him when he’s in public. He assumes it’s because they don’t want to talk about the massacre.

“But I live it every day,” he said. “I can’t get away from it.”

His eyes glanced up and to the right, which is seen as a facial cue of memory retrieval.

Prior to choosing a career path in teaching, Reyes said he wanted to be a lawyer.

“I just knew that I was going to be someone that people can depend on,” he said. “I was going to help people.”

Reyes now works at his plant shop, which was open a year prior to the shooting, but closed for a year and a half while he focused on healing. He reopened it six months ago.

The store is filled with crosses that he painted himself, along with plants, holiday décor and jewelry with symbols of guardian angels.

Frida Kahlo artwork is seen on almost every shelf. Kahlo, who had health problems nearly all her life, was a Mexican painter best known for her themes of identity, death and social change through her artwork.

Reyes greets his customers in English or Spanish, depending on what is most appropriate for the interaction.

His patrons speak comfortably in his shop, asking questions about what color flowers would look best on a cross for Easter. They squeeze their way into the store, even after closing hours, but he welcomes them all with warm greetings.

“It keeps me busy and keeps my mind busy as well,” Reyes said.

He said that he receives a lot of support from people out of town, but not many people from Uvalde visit to support his business.

His shop is filled with bright colors, and there are toys on the register desk that he will give out for free to students.

There is a deep sadness in Reyes’s eyes, and while he appears to find joy in running his shop, the loss of his past life is evident. While not having biological children of his own, he lost 11 of his children that day, and the trajectory of his life and dreams as an educator were forever changed.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Teacher who survived Uvalde school shooting works through the pain