Arnulfo Reyes: The Uvalde Teacher Who Survived Room 111

Arnulfo Reyes is the Uvalde teacher who was the only person to survive Classroom 111 at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022. All eleven of his fourth-grade students were killed. Reyes was shot twice, in the left arm and the back, and has since become one of the most visible survivors pressing for gun safety legislation and law enforcement accountability.¹

What Happened in Room 111

Two days before the end of the school year, an eighteen-year-old gunman entered Robb Elementary through an unlocked back door with an AR-15-style rifle. He walked into adjoining fourth-grade classrooms, Rooms 111 and 112, and opened fire. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed, and at least seventeen other people were injured, before U.S. Border Patrol agents killed the gunman 77 minutes later.²

Reyes had eleven students in his room that morning: Nevaeh Bravo, Jackie Cazares, Jose Flores Jr., Uziyah Garcia, Xavier Lopez, Jayce Luevanos, Annabell Rodriguez, Lexi Rubio, Layla Salazar, Eliahna Torres, and Rojelio Torres. None of them survived.¹ The teachers next door, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, were also killed.²

Testifying in January 2026, Reyes described seeing a “black shadow with a gun” come into the classroom. He was shot in the left arm and fell, then shot in the back. He told the court the gunman splashed blood on his face to taunt him, and that he closed his eyes and played dead. He also said he heard a child in the next classroom call out to officers for help before more gunfire followed.³⁴

The Injuries and the Long Recovery

The round that struck Reyes’s arm shattered the bone, which doctors replaced with a titanium rod. The wound in his back was described as the size of a grapefruit, and surgeons used skin grafts taken from his back and thigh to reconstruct missing flesh in his arm.¹

By May 2023, he had been through eleven surgeries. For the last of those, his medical team let him choose the permanent orientation of his left palm, and he picked palm-down to make texting and typing easier. He remained on workers’ compensation during recovery, with chronic pain in his arm and back and no certainty that it would fully resolve.¹⁵

Life After: Grief, Guilt, and His Career

Reyes has spoken openly about depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He works with a therapist on what he calls “normalcy”: sleeping, showering, making breakfast. Crowds feel unsafe, and he has not returned to his church, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, saying no place feels safe anymore.¹

Being the only survivor of his classroom carries a particular isolation. “I don’t have nobody I can go and bond with,” he said. “I can’t say, ‘How are your stitches? How are you dealing with losing 11 kids?'” He has described survivor’s guilt but has also said he has worked to forgive the shooter, school administrators, elected officials, and even cousins of his who were among the officers at the scene during the delayed response.¹

Before the shooting, Reyes had taught for seventeen years, six of them at Robb, first in Pre-K and then in fourth grade.⁶ He also owned a small business, Arnie’s Nursery & Gifts, which he had opened about a year before the attack. He closed it for a year and a half during his recovery and later reopened it. His mother, sister, and brother have been his primary support system. He has said he is unsure whether he will ever return to teaching.¹

The Classroom Door He Had Reported

A Texas House of Representatives investigation found that the door to Room 111 was “ordinarily unsecured and accessible.” The lock existed but was faulty: the bolt did not fit the frame correctly, and the strike plate was damaged. Reyes had alerted school administrators to the problem more than once before the shooting, and no work order was ever issued.⁷⁸

The problem was school-wide. Robb’s classroom doors could only be locked from the outside, and a key shortage, made worse when the manufacturer discontinued the lock model, led some staff to use magnets and other workarounds, in violation of policy. The House report described a “regrettable culture of noncompliance” and concluded that if doors had been locked per policy, it “could have slowed his progress for a few precious minutes.”⁸⁷

At the 2026 trial of a former Uvalde CISD officer, defense attorney Nico LaHood suggested Reyes bore partial responsibility for leaving the door unlocked that morning. Reyes testified that he believed the door was locked and repeated that he had reported the malfunctioning latch to the school.⁴

Becoming a Public Voice

Reyes started speaking out almost immediately. From his hospital bed at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio on June 6, 2022, he told ABC News that the officers who waited in the hallway while children were dying were “cowards.” He pledged, “I will go to the end of the world to make sure things get changed.”⁹

He has since partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety and has called for a federal ban on assault weapons, which he has called “weapons of war.” He has also pushed for raising the minimum purchase age for firearms and strengthening background checks, while saying he is not opposed to gun ownership itself. He has been pointed about Texas lawmakers, saying they “sit on their hands” on gun safety despite repeated mass shootings in the state.¹⁰⁹

Starting in 2023, he began organizing an annual memorial in Uvalde on the anniversary. Participants fly orange flags, the color associated with gun violence awareness, for 77 minutes, the length of time the gunman was inside the school. On May 24, 2026, Reyes led the observance at the downtown plaza, saying he does it “for these 21 and their kids — to bring awareness to gun violence.”¹¹¹²

The School District and His Civil Claim

Reyes has said the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District left him on his own. The superintendent at the time, Hal Harrell, waited a month to reach out, by which point Reyes refused to speak with him. The next superintendent, Gary Patterson, called twice, with each call under five minutes. “They’ve never really given support,” Reyes said. “They just forgot us.”¹³ His counseling was arranged through workers’ compensation, not the district.⁶

He chose not to sue the school district. He is, however, a plaintiff in a civil claim against the estate of the deceased shooter, the shooter’s family, and companies that made the security and communication equipment used in the response. His attorney, Mark DiCarlo, said Reyes is seeking at least $1 million in damages.¹³

The Criminal Cases Over the Police Response

Nearly 400 officers from local, state, and federal agencies converged on the school, and none breached the classrooms for 77 minutes.¹⁴ A January 2024 Department of Justice report found “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training,” concluding officers wrongly treated the scene as a barricaded-suspect situation rather than an active shooter. Attorney General Merrick Garland said lives would have been saved had officers followed accepted active-shooter protocols.¹⁵

On June 27, 2024, a Uvalde County grand jury indicted Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former CISD officer Adrian Gonzales on felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child.¹⁶

Adrian Gonzales Acquittal

Gonzales faced 29 counts, one for each of the 19 children killed and 10 who survived. The trial was moved to Nueces County and held in January 2026, with Reyes among 36 prosecution witnesses.¹⁷ Special prosecutor Bill Turner told jurors that “every second counts in an active shooter situation.”¹⁸ The defense argued Gonzales never saw the gunman and that a conviction would create a “don’t go in” mindset in future officers. After about seven hours of deliberation on January 21, 2026, the jury acquitted Gonzales on all 29 counts.¹⁹

Pete Arredondo’s Pending Trial

Arredondo faces 10 counts of child endangerment, one for each surviving child in the two classrooms. As of mid-2026, his trial was tentatively set for February 22, 2027, though the date remained uncertain. The case has been stalled by a dispute over the testimony of 19 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees who responded to the shooting; CBP has resisted, saying the requests would reveal “confidential law enforcement techniques and procedures.”²⁰²¹

Legacy Elementary and the Annual Remembrance

Robb Elementary was demolished, and in October 2025 Legacy Elementary opened as its replacement. The $60 million campus, funded by private donors and the state, was designed with trauma-informed features including bullet-resistant windows and key-card access to classroom wings.²² Its central courtyard holds a sculpted steel oak tree with 21 branches, 19 smaller for the students and two larger for the teachers.²³

Reyes attended the ribbon-cutting on October 10, 2025, and called the day “bittersweet.”²³ Each May 24, he keeps the orange flags flying for 77 minutes.

1
San Antonio Express-News. Uvalde Massacre Survivor
2
Britannica. Uvalde School Shooting
3
KSAT. Testimony to Resume in Second Week of Ex-Uvalde CISD Police Officer’s Child Endangerment Trial
4
Houston Public Media. Uvalde School Shooting Trial Teacher Testifies
5
KSAT. Uvalde Teacher Reflects on Survivor’s Guilt and Healing Two Years After Shooting
6
Texas Standard. Uvalde Shooting Teacher Arnulfo Reyes
7
Texas House of Representatives. Robb Elementary Investigative Committee Report
8
Texas Observer. Uvalde Locks Security Missing Keys
9
ABC News. Teacher Survived Uvalde Shooting Slams Police Response
10
Everytown for Gun Safety. The Loss We Feel Is Immeasurable
11
Uvalde Leader-News. Locals Plan Two May 24 Observances
12
Fox San Antonio. Lone Survivor of Robb Elementary Shooting Leads Emotional Remembrance
13
NBC News. Uvalde Teacher Survived Mass Shooting Feels Abandoned by School District
14
U.S. Department of Justice. Critical Incident Review of Response to Mass Shooting at Robb Elementary
15
Texas Tribune. Uvalde School Shooting Federal Investigation Police Response
16
Texas Tribune. Uvalde School Shooting Police Chief Arredondo Indictment
17
KSAT. Timeline of Charges Against Former Uvalde CISD Officers
18
Courthouse News Service. Testimony Ends in Uvalde Officer’s Trial
19
KSAT. Closing Arguments in Child Endangerment Trial of Ex-Uvalde CISD Police Officer
20
KSAT. Trial Day Set for Former Uvalde School Police Chief
21
Texas Tribune. CBP Pete Arredondo Lawsuit Uvalde School Shooting Trial
22
Houston Public Media. Opening of New Uvalde School Marks Bittersweet Day for Families and Town
23
San Antonio Express-News. Legacy Elementary Uvalde School