Mother of Uvalde school shooting victim speaks at MU’s campus days after Georgia high school shooting
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
In the wake of this week’s shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia, the pain families and community members are feeling still lingers.
The University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute on Friday hosted a woman who has experienced one of these tragedies firsthand. In 77 minutes, Kimberly Mata-Rubio’s world changed forever.
“I could not possibly comprehend a shooting was unfolding in my small town. My son Julian Rubio made it home. My daughter, Lexi, never made it out of the classroom,” Mata-Rubio said.
On May 24, 2022, 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas were murdered by an 18-year-old armed with a rifle, the same type of weapon used to kill four people in Winder, Georgia.
“I know exactly what they are going through right now. They received life-altering and devastating news. That they’ll never recover from. It will never get better. Time does not heal in this instance,” Mata-Rubio said.
In the days following the Uvalde shooting, Mata-Rubio -- who was working for a local news outlet at the time -- soon went from being a journalist to the subject of the story.
She hopes that Lexi’s name can be tied to meaning change. But that change has been hard to come by, which is something that state Rep. LaKesha Bosely (D-St. Louis) has experienced at t.
Bosely’s district experienced its own tragedy just months after the shooting in Uvalde when a 19-year-old opened fire on the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, killing two students.
“The legislators, couldn't even be bothered to step outside of the chamber to hear those scholars' stories of the trauma that they experience,” Bosely told ABC 17 News last week. “The speaker of the House wouldn't even call a committee hearing just to hear the bill. In order for the teachers and the scholars and those parents to really tell their story, to get it out.”
A weapons-detection system was added to high schools in the Columbia Public Schools district before the start of the new school yea r. The district bought 15 Opengate weapon detection systems, according to previous reporting.
Hickman senior Karli Jones – who is the president of the CPS Students for Change, a student group that advocates for student safety – said earlier this week that she hopes will be done to stop these tragedies.
"I just wish that people could see that being sad is one thing, and doing something about it is another, and that we have to transition into doing something and supporting people that are doing things,” she said.
