The husband of one of the teachers murdered in a mass school shooting in Texas on Tuesday has “died of a broken heart”, according to family.
Joe Garcia was the husband of Irma Garcia, one of two teachers killed by a teenage gunman Salvador Ramos at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
The couple had been together for over 25 years, and are survived by four children.
On Twitter, Mrs Garcia’s nephew John Martinez said that Mr Garcia “passed away due to grief” in the wake of his wife’s murder.
By Friday, an online fundraiser for the Garcia family raised over $2m (£1.6m) out of an initial goal of $10,000.
When officers walked into the school, they found Mrs Garcia “embracing children in her arms pretty much until her last breath,” Mr Martinez told the New York Times.
The fundraiser page states that “she loved her classroom kids and died trying to protect them”.
It continues that Mr and Mrs Garcia’s family “truly believe Joe died of a broken heart, and losing the love of his life of more than 25 years was too much to bear.”
A total of 19 children and two teachers, including Irma, were killed in Tuesday’s shooting.
The shooting is the deadliest at a US primary school since the infamous Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults were killed almost a decade ago.
Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey said the spate of mass shootings across America is “an epidemic we can control” as he led tributes to the victims in his hometown of Uvalde.
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