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Robb staff refuting mother’s rescue claimsFree Access

Melissa Federspill
Staff Writer

 Multiple Robb Elementary School employees are speaking out against claims made by Angeli Rose Gomez, the non-custodial mother of two campus students, regarding alleged heroics during the May 24, 2022, mass shooting.

Gomez has been featured on television news stations saying that a U.S. Marshal at the school that day detained her, even handcuffing her, before she was able to enter the school and pull her children from their classrooms.

The U.S. Marshals indirectly refuted the detention claim on May 27 via social media platform Twitter.

“Additional Deputy U.S. Marshals were asked to expand and secure the official law enforcement perimeter around the school,” reads the post. “Deputy marshals never arrested or placed anyone in handcuffs while securing the crime scene perimeter.”

The Uvalde Leader-News has a photo, taken around 1:40 p.m. on May 24, that shows Gomez’s second-grader on a bus at the Willie De Leon Civic Center, a makeshift reunification site, corroborating the employees’ assertions. 

According to school employees, both of Gomez’s children, the second-grader as well as a third-grader, remained in locked classrooms until evacuation began.

The second-grader boarded a bus for transport to the civic center, but campus employees say Gomez grabbed her third-grader from line as the students were walking out of the front gate after law enforcement officers escorted them from the classroom.

During the June 20 meeting of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s board of trustees, Gomez told the board she found it shameful that there were over 100 officers at the scene on May 24, but she was the one who saved her children.

Since the tragedy, Gomez, who was most recently arrested on July 16, has also said she is being threatened and harassed by law enforcement. 

In late June, Mark Di Carlo, who was acting as Gomez’s attorney at that time, announced plans for legal action against the Uvalde Police Department as a result of the harassment.

On Aug. 4, Di Carlo said a lawsuit still had not been filed and said he referred Gomez’s civil rights case to a non-profit public interest law firm highly specialized in civil rights law.

Gomez has also been publicly critical of the school district’s handling of school safety.

The police department did not respond to requests for comment regarding Gomez’s harassment claims, but Gomez’s history with law enforcement precedes the Robb School shooting. 

According to Leader-News archives, Gomez has been arrested at least 10 times since 2014, on charges ranging from  aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, family violence, abandoning or endangering a child,  marijuana possession, resisting arrest, and  assaulting a public servant as well as numerous probation/pre-trial release violations related to the aforementioned charges.

The newspaper contacted Gomez for comment by phone and email on Aug. 4. She indicated she would interview in person that same day, but she did not uphold those plans.