A grieving father has opened up about the heartbreaking moment he discovered his 10-year-old daughter had been killed in Tuesday's Texas school shooting.
In a harrowing interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Angel Garza - a trained medic aide - recalled how his daughter Amerie Jo had spent her final moments trying to help her classmates.
On Tuesday morning, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire on a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. He killed 19 children and two teachers.
When Garza arrived at the scene to provide medical assistance, he was unaware that his own daughter was one of the victims. The medic told Cooper how he learned the devastating news from one of Amerie's classmates.
"One little girl was just covered in blood, head-to-toe … I thought she was injured, so I asked her what was wrong," he explained, adding that the child was hysterical but otherwise uninjured. Garza recalled how she told him that the blood all over her had come from her best friend.
"And I asked the little girl the name and she said … she told me," Garza's voice broke and tears streamed down his face before he continued: "She told me Amerie."
As the distraught father wept uncontrollably, Cooper comforted him, saying in shock: "That’s how you learned."
In the wake of the attack, it has been reported that Amerie tried to dial 911 on her cellphone as the gunman - 18-year-old Salvador Ramos - trapped them in a classroom and began shooting at random. The phone had been a present for her 10th birthday, which she celebrated just weeks before with her parents and her little brother.
In his interview with CNN, Garza told Cooper that his daughter was "just trying to do the right thing." As their conversation drew to a close, Cooper - who was himself visibly emotional by this point - asked Garza whether there was anything he wanted the world to know about his daughter.
"I just want people to know she died trying to save her classmates," he said, adding: "She just wanted to save everyone."
