Today, we mourn for the victims of Uvalde. |
Maite Rodriguez, her mother's only daughter, dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. |
Tess Marie Mata played the same position on her softball team — second base — as her favorite Houston Astros player. |
Layla Salazar sang "Sweet Child O' Mine," by Guns N' Roses, with her father on their morning drives to school. |
Xavier Lopez made the honor roll on Tuesday, which would turn out to be the last day of his life. |
The 19 children killed that day at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were both typical and extraordinary. To read their life stories — as journalists and family members compile them this week — is devastating. We think that it's also necessary, as a tribute to the children and an acknowledgment of the toll of this country's unique gun violence. |
Today's newsletter contains photographs and a brief sketch of each of the 19 children. It includes the same for the two Robb teachers murdered in the attack: Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia. You can read more by clicking on the links below. |
 | | From left: Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, Amerie Jo Garza, Tess Marie Mata and Jose Flores. |
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Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10: Alexandria, who went by Lexi, played softball and basketball and wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. Her parents saw her make the honor roll with straight A's and receive a good-citizen award at her school on the day she was killed. |
Amerie Jo Garza, 10: Amerie was "a jokester, always smiling," her father said. She liked playing with Play-Doh and spending time with friends during recess. "She was very social," he said. "She talked to everybody." |
Tess Marie Mata, 10: Tess liked TikTok dance videos, Ariana Grande and getting her hair curled, The Washington Post reported. And she loved José Altuve, the diminutive Houston Astros star whose position she emulated. She was saving money for a family trip to Disney World once her older sister, Faith, graduated from college next year. |
 | | From left: Miranda Mathis, Maite Rodriguez, Makenna Lee Elrod, Xavier Lopez |
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Miranda Mathis, 11: Miranda "was very loving and very talkative," the mother of a close friend told The Austin American-Statesman. Miranda would often ask the mother to do her hair like her friend's. |
Maite Rodriguez, 10: Maite dreamed of attending Texas A&M University to become a marine biologist, a cousin wrote on Facebook: "She was her mom's best friend." |
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10: Makenna liked to sing and dance, play with fidget toys and practice softball and gymnastics, an aunt told ABC News. She also loved animals, and hiding notes for her family to find. She recently gave her friend Chloe a friendship bracelet. |
Xavier Lopez, 10: An exuberant baseball and soccer player, Xavier also chatted on the phone with his girlfriend and made the honor roll. "He was funny, never serious," his mother, Felicha Martinez, told The Washington Post. "That smile I will never forget. It would always cheer anyone up." |
 | | From left: Eliana "Ellie" Garcia, Layla Salazar, Eliahana Cruz Torres, Alithia Ramirez |
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Eliana Garcia, 9: The second-eldest of five girls, Ellie helped around the house, reminding her grandparents to take their pills, helping mow the lawn and babysitting her younger sisters, her grandfather told The Los Angeles Times. She loved "Encanto," dancing for TikTok videos, cheerleading and basketball. |
Layla Salazar, 10: Layla also liked dancing to TikTok videos, and she won six races at the school's field day, her father told The Associated Press. She and her dad would sing every morning on their drive to school. |
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10: Eliahana played softball and particularly looked forward to wearing her green and gray uniform, along with eye black grease. The final game of the season was scheduled for Tuesday, and she was hoping to make the Uvalde All-Star team. |
Alithia Ramirez, 10: Alithia loved to draw. She wanted to become an artist, her father told a San Antonio TV station. After a car struck and killed her best friend last year, Alithia sent his parents a drawing of him sketching her portrait in heaven and her sketching his portrait on earth. |
 | | From left: Jackie Cazares, Annabelle Rodriguez, Jailah Silguero, Jayce Luevanos |
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Jackie Cazares and Annabelle Rodriguez were cousins in the same class. Jackie was the social one. "She always had to be the center of attention," her aunt said. "She was my little diva." Annabelle was quieter. But the girls were close — so close that Annabelle's twin sister, who was home-schooled, "was always jealous." |
Jailah Silguero, 10: Jailah was the youngest of four children, the "baby" of the family, her father said. Her mother told Univision that Jailah liked to dance and film videos on TikTok. |
Jayce Luevanos, 10: Jayce, Jailah's cousin, would brew a pot of coffee for his grandparents every morning, his grandfather told USA Today. Friends would come over to his house, a block from the school, to play in the yard. He enjoyed making people laugh, another relative told The Daily Beast. |
 | | From Left: Uziyah Garcia, Nevaeh Bravo, Rojelio Torres |
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Uziyah Garcia, 9: Uziyah enjoyed video games and football. His grandfather told The Los Angeles Times that Uziyah "was the type of kid [who] could get interested in anything in five minutes. Just the perfect kid, as far as I'm concerned." |
 | | From left: Eva Mireles, Irma Garcia |
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Eva Mireles, 44: "She loved those children," a neighbor said. Mireles had worked for the school district for about 17 years. She enjoyed running and hiking. "She was just very adventurous and courageous and vivacious and could light up a room," a relative told ABC News. |
Irma Garcia, 46: Garcia spent 23 years at Robb Elementary, five of them as Mireles's co-teacher. She liked to sing along to classic rock tunes and help her nephew, a college student, with his homework. Garcia was known as a steadfast optimist. She enjoyed barbecuing with her husband of 24 years, Joe; he died yesterday, of a heart attack. |
- Ray Liotta, star of "Goodfellas" and "Field of Dreams," died in his sleep. He was 67.
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Advice from Wirecutter: The best time to buy outdoor gear? Right now. |
Lives Lived: The wily, risk-taking Morton Janklow was arguably America's most powerful independent literary agent. His agency represented Danielle Steel, three presidents and a pope. Janklow died at 91. |
 | | Evan Sung for The New York Times |
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The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were paranoid and raindrop. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. |
P.S. Mira Rojanasakul, a visual journalist, is joining The Times's Climate desk from Bloomberg. |
Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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