HEARTBROKEN

‘We Know Everybody’: Uvalde Justice of the Peace Called to ID School Shooting Victims

Eulalio Diaz worked late into the night identifying the 19 children and two adults murdered on Tuesday.

The rural Texas town of Uvalde doesn’t have its own medical examiner, so it fell to a local Justice of the Peace to identify the 19 children and two adults massacred in a school shooting Tuesday. Eulalio Diaz worked into the night as families anxiously waited and provided DNA samples to establish if their kids were among the dead. “Some of the children were not in good shape,” Diaz told the El Paso Times. He estimated it would take around 48 hours for the bodies to be released, adding that he faced the “tough” task of typing up 21 death certificates. “We know everybody,” Diaz said, referring to himself and his own school-age children. “We know children who were there. As soon as we heard about the shooter, we were also fielding calls from our families.” Diaz also questioned how a local 18-year-old, who was too young to legally buy cigarettes or alcohol, could purchase two AR-15s.