Caitlyne Gonzales was 10 years old when she survived the Uvalde school shooting that killed two teachers and19 students at Robb Elementary School on May 24 in Texas. What it means to live through something so awful and have to return to school is something many can not even imagine, but that is not where the suffering ended for Caitlyne.
John Woodrow Cox, an enterprise reporter with The Washington Post, spent a summer interviewing her. And in a single Twitter thread Cox posted on Tuesday about his work, he illuminated just what it means to have survived something so unimaginable and still have to deal with the all-too-frequent reminder that, when it comes to some cops, your tragedy matters only about as much as your skin color.
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Three SUVs of Texas state troopers blocked in the Ford Fusion Caitlyne rode in with her mom, dad, and sister, Camila. Caitlyne “clenched her teeth and crossed her arms,” Cox wrote.
“Oh my God,” her sister said.
“Shush,” Caitlyne responded.
Cox described the child as “terrified.”
“It was three days before school started, and I'd spent all summer with Caitlyne,” the reporter wrote. “She knew the police took 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Robb and, like many people in Uvalde, Caitlyne deeply resented them for it. Her friends died, she believed, because they failed.”
They failed again when they chose to stop Caitlyne’s family on what she told Cox was “the best day she’d had in weeks.”
The family had made a stop on the way back from the O’Rourke rally to visit Caitlyne’s grandfather in Eagle Pass, Cox reported.
By the time troopers stopped the family, Caitlyne was asleep on her mother's shoulder.
“’I knew it,’ her dad said, because immigrants who shared his skin color and crossed the border illegally often traveled from Eagle Pass to Uvalde,’” Cox penned. “‘Oh, we got a whole carload, huh?’ the trooper asked as soon as he walked up.”
The trooper alleged Caitlyne’s father, Nef Gonzalez, was speeding in a 30 mile-per-hour zone. “Speeding” actually amounted to 5 miles per hour over the speed limit, Cox wrote.
He continued:
“Your kids? Your children?” the trooper asked, pointing.
“Well, yeah. She’s one of the victims, and she’s afraid of—” Nef said, stopping before “police” tumbled out. “Robb victim, so she’s a little bit nervous.” The man smiled at the girls and waved. Caitlyne didn’t wave back.
The trooper said he didn't want to make Caitlyne nervous and let the family off with a warning. But Caitlyne’s father made the kind of observation of police response to minor infractions that Black and brown people are all too familiar with.
Caitlyne was across the hall from the shooter, KERA News reported. She called her mother, Gladys, crying and asking, "Mommy, come pick me up now,” the radio station reported. Caitlyne said she was thinking about her friends and family, especially her mother, who had just left the school's award ceremony.
“She was just seconds away from being taken from me,” the woman told KERA News.
Caitlyne told the radio station just days after the shooting she was doing “really well,” and needed to “stay strong for my family and friends.”
She had written a message as part of a memorial for one friend of hers, a fourth-grader named Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares, who didn't survive the shooting.
Caitlyne penned:
“Hey Jackie, I love and miss you so much. It will be so different without you. I planned to have a lot of sleepovers with you. Rest in Peace Jackie.”
Caitlyne told KERA News she lost a lot of her best friends in the shooting. Her class was able to escape when a SWAT team broke a window and the students climbed out. Caitlyn said she "ran out with just socks and thank God" didn’t get any glass on her.
In the months after the shooting, Caitlyne watched videos of other school shooting survivors and spoke at an Unheard Voices March and Rally in Uvalde.
By Cox’s account, Caitlyne was having a good day on Sept. 3, more than three months after the shooting. Caitlyne had the opportunity to meet “one of her gun-safety heroes,” Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke.
“She took a selfie with him, got free shirts, ate fried chicken after,” Cox tweeted. “Then, on the way home, police lights flashed behind her family's car.”
“Three of them—for a speeding ticket,” Nef said, and Cox quoted. The U.S. Army tag indicating Nef’s military service “hadn’t dissuaded them,” Cox wrote.
He continued:
On their way home, the family spotted one of the SUVs. “K-9,” it read on the back. “Oh my God,” Caitlyne said. “They were profiling,” Nef said of the troopers, who both appeared to be white. “That’s it.” (13/)
At home, Caitlyne slumped onto a couch, staring at her phone until she snapped at Camila for moving her “Beto” bumper sticker, her face contorted into a scowl. Her parents reminded her what a special time they’d had, but now, none of that mattered to her.
Rex Toltschin, an LGBTQ and human rights activist, tweeted in response to the cop encounter:
“This story - is real life in Southern Texas, this is Know Your Place life in Southern Texas - and if your skin is brown - you are always living in Know Your Place - as Southern White Texas is all about keeping the local POC population living in fear. Great job John Woodrow Cox!”
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