Texas dad stands guard outside his child's school after Uvalde tragedy

A dad from Killeen, Texas, has begun standing guard outside his daughter’s elementary school in wake of the Uvalde tragedy.

As reported by KWTX, Ed Chelby said his daughter attends Saegert Elementary and that he was permitted by the school's superintendent to stand guard.

Chelby revealed that he has 11 years of experience in the US Army and security and that his wife is the school's nurse.

"I said I would just be out there unarmed to let people know that I’m watching. Let the parents have a little bit of relief," Chelby said in an interview with the local news station.

"I can’t let this go," he continued. "This is just a testament to the sleeplessness caused by the grief I experienced."

Per the Independent, Chelby also disclosed that he filed out the paperwork to become a school volunteer, and was in the middle of a background check when he was approved to stand guard.

He said that his choice to stand outside of his daughter's school was praised by his local community as well as on social media.

"I’ve had a lot of emotional people come up to me," Chelby said, "They didn’t want to send their kids to school. They struggled with sending their kids to school. And I told them, I was like, 'I got them.'"

"You don’t know if you should send your kid to school," he continued. "You want them to get their education and their experience of the last days of school, but you want to protect them with everything you got."

Samantha Longfeather-Locke, the mother of a student at Saegert, said she appreciates the father's efforts.

"Him standing in front of the school, that’s reassuring - feeling that we get to go home and see our families this summer," Longfeather-Locke said.

Credit: Bob Daemmrich / Alamy.

Killeen is located about 175 miles northwest of Uvalde, where there was a mass school shooting on Tuesday (May 24).

An 18-year-old gunman named Salvador Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom before opening fire and killing 19 children between the ages of nine and 11, as well as two teachers.

The tragedy reignited calls to introduce gun reform legislation in the US after Ramos used two semi-automatic firearms to carry out the massacre.

Featured image credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy