Grieving husband dies of heart attack after wife slain in Texas school shooting

euronews.com:

Tragedy has descended twice in less than a week on one Texan family, extending the tragedy visited upon the community of Uvalde, Texas. 

The family of Irma Garcia was already reeling from the death of the schoolteacher in the Texas shooting that targeted her fourth-grade classroom, killing her, her co-teacher and 19 students.

Then, just two days later, her grieving husband collapsed and died at home from a heart attack, a family member said.

Joe Garcia, 50, dropped off flowers at his wife’s memorial Thursday morning in Uvalde and then returned home, where he “pretty much just fell over” and died, his nephew John Martinez told The New York Times.

The Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Rushing-Estes-Knowles Mortuary confirmed Joe Garcia’s death to The Associated Press.

The couple had been married for 24 years and had four children.

The Garcias loved to barbecue, 48-year-old Irma wrote in an online letter to her students at Robb Elementary School. She also enjoyed listening to music and travelling to Concan, a community along the Frio River about 40 kilometres north of Uvalde.

The school year, scheduled to end on Thursday, was Garcia's 23rd year of teaching — all of it at Robb. She was previously named the school's teacher of the year and was a 2019 recipient of the Trinity Prize for Excellence in Education from Trinity University.

For five years, Garcia co-taught with Eva Mireles, who also was killed.

The suspect, Salvador Ramos, was inside the classroom for more than an hour before he was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, authorities said.

“Mrs Irma Garcia was my mentor when I began teaching," her colleague Allison McCullough wrote when Garcia was named teacher of the year. "The wealth of knowledge and patience that she