A mother who heroically saved her children during the tragic Uvalde school shooting in May is experiencing harassment at the hands of local cops, Fox 29 reported. According to the local news outlet, the mother of two children who attended the Robb Elementary school where two teachers and 19 children were killed has faced backlash from law enforcement, even at home. “The other night we were exercising and we had a cop parked at the corner like, flickering us with his headlights," Angeli Rose Gomez told reporters.
She added that because of this and similar incidents, she has had to separate from her boys, "just so my sons don't feel like they have to watch cops passing by, stopping, parking."
Campaign Action
Gomez made headlines as the mom who quickly rushed to her sons’ school when she heard the news that there was an active shooter. Upon arriving, she said she not only heard children screaming and gunshots, but saw law enforcement officials standing outside. Seeing this, she said she tried to get other parents to have law enforcement officials do something only to be threatened with being handcuffed, which she later was.
"As soon as they [police] take me off the cuff I see his arm like, give me a little gateway, because I'm real little so a little gateway where I can just run,” Gomez told Fox 29.
Gomez then jumped a fence and began banging on a window in a door, where she saw her oldest son's teacher. Gomez told her, "like you already have a gateway out, so might as well just come out like if I'm going to run out with him, y'all just come on too."
After getting her eldest out with some of his classmates, Gomez searched the school for her younger son.
"At this moment I'm jiggling the handle and I'm going pretty nuts like trying to get the door open and it's not gonna open, so I stand back and the cops are already on me and they're like ‘ma'am calm down!’"
According to Fox 29, Gomez then told them to evacuate the school or she won't leave her spot. She said "immediately they start evacuating that classroom and my son runs out to me and he's like, ‘mom, mom!’"
"I just remember when my son saw my other son, one hugged the other one and said 'I'm so glad you're okay', and the other one said, 'I was so worried you weren’t.'" She continued, ”so it was a big thing because in that moment I was like, they're really happy to see each other, thank god to each other that they're alive."
This isn’t the first time the Texas mother has expressed being afraid of “someone in law enforcement” trying to silence her from speaking out. In an interview with CBS News earlier this month, Gomez noted that the harassment started after she was warned by police to stop telling her story.
But despite how law enforcement officials are allegedly treating Gomez, she stands strong.
According to Fox 29, alongside demanding Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo be fired without pay, Gomez is planning on filing a lawsuit. Arrendondo has been criticized nationwide for failing to take control of police response and delaying officers from entering the classroom when the gunman entered the building. He defended his actions to The Texas Tribune, to which he said allegations against him were false and he did his best to save as many children and teachers as possible.
“The fact that he wasn't fired immediately based upon whatever it is, hours of video, from testimonies such as Angeli’s, is an indication that there is some sort of what, corruption or wrong-doing,” said Gomez’s criminal defense attorney, Mark Di Carlo. Di Carlo is representing about 15 parents in the Uvalde community.