Three weeks after her 10th birthday, Amerie Jo Garza was laid to rest Tuesday before the eyes of God, her broken family, a shattered town and a shamed nation.
Pallbearers unload Amerie Jo Garza’s casket for her funeral at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde on Tuesday. Garza was one of the 21 people — 19 students and two teachers — who died in the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24, 2022.UVALDE — She had three names joined like charms on a bracelet.
Amerie’s body arrived Tuesday afternoon at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a 114-year-old parish in a quiet neighborhood about a mile from the elementary school. Its sanctuary backs into a broad canopy of old oak trees offering shade to a statue of the Virgin Mary. She stares out at just one of the many memorials around town for those lost at Robb — 21 framed pictures hanging from a metal barricade with stuffed animals and flowers for all the children.
After the Mass, Amerie’s procession made the short drive to Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery, where mourners stepped through gaps in the hedge of sage bushes that line the grounds toward the spot that would become her gravesite. A few hundred had gathered, enveloping her family around the casket for a short burial ceremony. Then her body was lowered into the ground.
She dreamed of channeling her creative energy into becoming an art teacher. The day after her death, her mother, Kimberly Garcia, posted a picture of Amerie holding up a certificate in recognition of joining the A-B honor roll. “You did not deserve this my sweet baby girl,” her mother wrote. “Mommy needs you, Amerie I can’t do this life without you.”Hundreds of gifts tower over Amerie Jo Garza’s makeshift memorial at the Uvalde town square Sunday evening.
“She would stick up for her for the bullies to stop picking on her,” said Treviño who was also Amerie’s cousin. “[My daughter] is taking it really hard. She would protect her from the bullies.” The Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, which neighbors Robb Elementary and had in the past had brought stacks of pizza for students to celebrate the last day of school, last Tuesday sheltered children who fled for their lives across Geraldine Street to reach the building’s doors amid the shooting.
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