The stench of burnt powder hung within the air because the elevator doorways opened, knocking Ramiro Martinez again on his heels for an instantaneous. Having muttered a determined Hail Mary to himself, the off-duty Austin police officer rushed into the observatory of the Tower on the College of Texas, the place a wicked killer, armed with a Remington 700, a shotgun, an M1 rifle and a grudge towards the world, had rained bullets down on the “Forty Acres” for almost 90 minutes.
Eleven have been lifeless on the bottom. Thirty-one have been wounded. Contained in the tower, three individuals had been killed, and two others wounded.
Moments after Martinez reached the observatory, he was joined by one other Austin cop, Houston McCoy, and a civilian named Allen Crum, who labored for the College Co-op. Alongside the best way, a younger wounded man had reached for the shotgun in McCoy’s fingers. “Let me shoot the sonofabitch,” he stated. “I’ll shoot him for you,” McCoy replied.
Civilian Allen Crum and Austin cops Ray Martinez, Houston McCoy and Jerry Day appeared earlier than the information media on Aug. 2, 1966, the day after the UT Tower capturing.
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Texas State Historic Affiliation
The 2 cops needed to transfer slowly as they edged towards the killer, Charles Whitman. Not solely as a result of he would possibly see them and shoot, however as a result of additionally they needed to dodge virtually fixed random fireplace from well-meaning residents, armed largely with looking rifles, from the bottom 300 toes under. It was solely minutes, however it appeared an eternity. Ultimately, they edged round a nook and had him of their sights. They opened fireplace, and Whitman slumped lifeless onto the observatory ground.
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And nonetheless, they needed to hunker down till the random fireplace from the bottom under finally subsided. For six a long time now, we’ve been informed that that’s how the August 1, 1966, bloodbath on the College of Texas at Austin ended.
The reality is, what started on the UT campus two generations in the past has by no means ended. It’s been repeated many times, together with in Killeen (23 lifeless, 1991), Fort Hood (13 lifeless, 2009), Sutherland Springs (26 lifeless, together with an unborn youngster, 2017), Santa Fe (10 lifeless, 2018), El Paso (23 lifeless, 2019), Midland-Odessa (seven lifeless, 4 weeks later) and now Uvalde, the place 19 schoolchildren and two educators have been killed on Tuesday by a teenage gunman.
Within the years because the slaughter started, we’ve cobbled collectively a patchwork of comforting myths to elucidate the atrocities we’ve witnessed.
Within the case of the UT shooter, we cling to the speculation {that a} tumor precipitated Whitman to homicide his spouse and 15 different harmless individuals. Although he did certainly have a mind tumor, it has by no means been conclusively confirmed that it was the tumor that led him to fastidiously plan and meticulously execute his mass homicide.
First: Smoke emanated from the gunman’s weapon as he fired from the statement deck of the UT Tower on Aug. 1, 1966. Final: An officer on the statement deck of the UT Tower.
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Texas State Historic Affiliation
We’ve blamed it on psychological sickness, ignoring the truth that 40 p.c of mass shooters didn’t present indicators or obtain a prognosis of psychological sickness, based on the Nationwide Alliance on Psychological Sickness. Make no mistake, there’s a profit to the eye that’s targeted on this nation’s insufficient psychological well being system within the wake of those atrocities. However it’s a collateral profit, at greatest, and it dangers stigmatizing the overwhelming majority of individuals with psychological sickness — 1 in 5 Individuals — who’re way more prone to be victims of crime than perpetrators.
We blame it on damaged households, or absent fathers, ignoring the truth that within the case of the Austin Tower killer, his father was maybe the only most influential particular person in his upbringing. Whitman’s father was a looming presence in his life, inflexible and authoritarian. He offered his household with all of the comforts postwar America might provide, however made positive that they understood that every one its blessings flowed instantly from him. Born in 1941, Whitman was raised in a typical nuclear household on the daybreak of the nuclear age, although his mother and father’ marriage did crumble a number of months earlier than the capturing.
We blame bullying and childhood trauma. It’s true {that a} third of all mass shooters have skilled extreme childhood trauma, and that the determine is way greater (68%) amongst college shooters, based on The Violence Challenge’s database of mass shootings in the USA from 1966 to 2019. There isn’t any query that childhood trauma should be among the many elements thought-about when assessing the assorted impulses and experiences that mix to show an individual right into a mass shooter. However it’s additionally true, because the communications researcher Casey Kelly has famous, that what many of those killers have claimed as victimization is usually little greater than their very own expertise of run-of-the-mill disappointments and frustrations.
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First: Hearses parked exterior Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen the place a mass capturing happened on Oct. 16, 1991. Final: A refrigerated truck was used for the victims at Luby’s Cafeteria.
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Courtesy of The Dallas Morning Information|Courtesy of Ralph Barrera/The Austin American-Statesman
We blame violent video video games for creating these killers, overlooking the truth that the killer at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 — the one American college capturing deadlier than final week’s in Uvalde — counted “Dance Dance Revolution” and the Mario Bros. as his favourite video games.
And when all these different explanations fail, we flip to the theological, envisioning the killers because the personification of evil, and imagining that the great amongst us will in the end prevail over them as a part of an epic wrestle that has been happening since earlier than the world started. It’s a phrase we’ve used repeatedly to explain these atrocities. When a gunman opened fireplace on congregants at a Fort Price church in 1999, killing seven, then-Gov. George W. Bush laid the blame on a “wave of evil” sweeping the land. The hero of the 2017 Sutherland Springs bloodbath, who confronted the gunman exterior a church the place 26 individuals (together with an unborn youngster) had been killed, later informed me that he felt he was confronting the embodiment of “pure evil.”
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It’s a comforting notion, as a result of it follows that whether it is “evil” that drives these killers, then “ideas and prayers” can exorcise it — certainly, it could be blasphemous to think about in any other case, even when it means many martyrdoms alongside the best way. However there’s grave hazard in that idea of evil. To the diploma that we are able to blame some power past human management for the deeds people do, we grant ourselves absolution for our personal sins of fee and of omission.
It’s not stunning that, confronted with mounting atrocities, we solid about for a silver bullet to elucidate away all those fabricated from lead, a single, easy resolution, or, failing that, a delusion to make the slaughter extra understandable. That’s human nature.
Nor ought to it’s stunning that so many of those myths can hint their roots to the atrocity on the College of Texas, and our efforts to grasp the continuing slaughter. Texas is a mythic place, and the myths that start right here have all the time develop into the myths of America.
However of all of the myths and tropes that have been born of fireside that first day of August 1966, none has been extra sturdy, or extra lethal, than this: the notion that we are able to counter this unfathomable horror with closely armed heroes who will rise spontaneously from our midst to avoid wasting us.
First: First responders ready the wounded for transport in ambulances exterior Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Middle after a mass capturing on the army base on Nov. 5, 2009. Subsequent: Military Spc. Robert Orcutt prayed close to a makeshift memorial for victims of the shootings at Fort Hood, close to Killeen. Final: A fallen soldier memorial honored the 13 victims of the Nov. 5, 2009, mass capturing at Fort Hood.
It’s the “good man with a gun” delusion. It was not usual out of complete fabric. Constructed upon our lengthy and darkish obsession with firearms, an indispensable a part of the parable of Texas and, by extension, the parable of America, it was lastly was a catchphrase by the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation’s Wayne LaPierre and marketed ruthlessly within the aftermath of the slaughter at Sandy Hook. And it had its first take a look at on the College of Texas. The outcomes have been, to place it bluntly, inconclusive.
To make certain, there have been those that rose to the problem of the second that day. And within the lore that’s developed since, we’ve come to have a good time the reminiscence of these college students and on a regular basis residents who ran dwelling to fetch their looking rifles and unleashed a barrage towards the tower, whereas McCoy, Martinez and Crum edged towards the killer perched on the parapet together with his long-range Remington.
It’s certainly doable that the hearth from the bottom might have pressured the assassin to take cowl behind the balustrade and impeded his means to intention and fireplace, saving some lives. However it’s simply as seemingly that the hearth from the bottom impeded the power of these heroic first responders to confront and kill Whitman. As Martinez informed me simply a few years in the past, “Bullets stored coming at us, they crack — you would hear the crack as they go over your head after which they’d hit the tower. Mud would come down, rain down in little particles of stone.”
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Within the a long time because the slaughter in Austin, a long time which have seen our streets flooded with weapons able to firing way more lethal rounds at a far quicker fee than the now virtually quaint rifle utilized by the ex-Marine within the tower, the trope has been examined time and time and time once more, and it has virtually all the time come up wanting.Certainly, out of 277 gun massacres examined by the FBI between 2000 and 2018 in three research, so-called good guys with weapons interrupted mass shootings 3.9% of the time. Unarmed civilians interrupted them virtually thrice extra usually (11.9%). And 27% of the time, it was a nasty man with a gun — the killer himself — who ended the rampage by killing himself.
But we cling to the parable of the great man with the gun; we’ve made it virtually an article of religion. Certainly, it’s now so deeply rooted in us that even the killers themselves use it to justify their slaughters, motivated as they virtually all the time are by some grievance, some sense of victimhood, some narcissistic, delusional imaginative and prescient of themselves as heroes or avengers. That was pushed dwelling to me not so terribly way back when, whereas interviewing a killer, now serving life in jail for a 1992 mass capturing at Bard School at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts that claimed three lives and would have claimed extra had the semiautomatic rifle he purchased on his 18th birthday not jammed, I requested him whether or not man with a gun would have stopped him.“I believed I used to be the great man with the gun,” he replied.
First: Police tape cordoned off the crime scene at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, the place 26 individuals have been killed on Nov. 5, 2017. Subsequent: Hannah Krueger added a cross to a memorial close to First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Nov. 8, 2017.
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Robin Jerstad for The Texas Tribune|Shelby Knowles for The Texas Tribune
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Make no mistake. There are heroes amongst us. As I stated earlier, we met one in Sutherland Springs after a gunman wearing physique armor and carrying a semi-automatic rifle opened fireplace inside a church. On that bloody morning, Stephen Willeford didn’t hesitate. He grabbed one in every of his personal AR-15s from his gun protected, ran barefoot down the road and known as into the church to confront the assassin, who dropped his personal rifle and got here exterior to face him with a handgun. They exchanged fireplace, and the gunman fled, wrecking his truck 11 miles away after which killing himself.
It stays unclear whether or not the killer knew that Willeford was armed when he got here out to face him. That assassin is in no place to inform us. What is obvious is that it wasn’t the gun that Willeford was carrying that introduced this rampage to an finish. It was the heroism of the great man. In case you ask him (as I did), Willeford will let you know that he would have run all the way down to the church and confronted the killer whether or not he had a gun or not.
He’s, in each sense of the phrase, a real hero. And he deserves each honor that has come his approach. Nobody might have completed greater than he did that day. Few, as we’ve seen again and again, would even attempt. However nonetheless, regardless of his uncommon heroism, regardless of his steely braveness and his instantaneous response, we should always remember that 26 individuals — starting from a pregnant lady to a 77-year-old grandfather — have been slaughtered in a matter of moments earlier than Willeford might arrive.
A police officer stood exterior the Walmart in El Paso the place a mass capturing happened on Aug. 3, 2019.
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Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune
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The identical factor occurred in July of 2019 in Gilroy, California, the place educated police arrived to confront a killer inside a minute, and nonetheless three have been murdered and 17 wounded. It occurred three weeks in the past in Buffalo, New York, the place a retired police officer traded fireplace with an armor-clad gunman carrying an AR-15 and was killed together with 9 different individuals, most of them Black. The historical past of mass shootings in America since Aug. 1, 1966, is a saga of armed males having to step over the lifeless and dying to finish a bloodbath.
And at what price?
Put aside for a second, should you can, the unspeakable grief and disgrace that we as a nation ought to really feel each time we take a look at pictures of the harmless victims of those massacres. Neglect for a second the anguish of their family members. Contemplate this as an alternative: the trauma etched within the faces of the primary responders who we thrust, poorly ready, into the bloody epicenter of those atrocities.
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You’ll be able to hear the affect within the voice of a veteran police officer, a member of one of many groups who first entered the school rooms at Sandy Hook, who was so overwhelmed by what he noticed that he merely erased the reminiscence, and when investigators requested him, he insisted that he by no means set foot inside, a kind of investigators later informed me. You’ll be able to really feel the terrible weight of it within the voice of a younger police officer, summoned to Sante Fe Excessive College, within the Houston space, throughout a mass capturing there, holding the road exterior the varsity whereas his personal mom was dying inside. In his grief, his household’s lawyer informed me, the officer cried out: “I’m supposed to guard and serve individuals, I couldn’t even defend my very own mom!”
First: Police tape and proof markers in Odessa the day after the Aug. 31, 2019, mass capturing there. Final: Messages have been written in sidewalk chalk as individuals gathered for a vigil in Odessa after the mass capturing.
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REUTERS/Callaghan O’Hare
Certainly, in our devotion to the concept “the one factor that may cease a nasty man with a gun is an efficient man with a gun,” we’re asking our police and first responders, our EMTs and our firefighters, to face horrors on their dwelling turf as nice as any they’d discover on the bloodiest international battlefield. We haven’t requested American troopers to do this in their very own nation, no less than because the Civil Warfare, but we demand it of those first responders.
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A lot of them will probably be long-term casualties of this ongoing slaughter, even when they by no means spilled a drop of their very own blood. Because the psychology researcher Deborah C. Beidel from the College of Central Florida, who has studied the affect these slaughters have on first responders, put it, “There are just a few occasions which might be so horrific that no human being ought to be capable to simply course of that and put it away.”And when, as we noticed final week in Uvalde, our officers, our defenders, fail for no matter purpose to rise to the second, we vilify them, and name them cowards. That, too, is a part of the parable of the great man with the gun, the notion that the world is binary, neatly divided into heroes and cowards. It isn’t.
None of that is meant to defend the inexcusable inaction for 40 minutes by the authorities at Robb Elementary College in Uvalde, whereas an 18-year-old killer armed with a semi-automatic rifle purchased on credit score, able to firing 100 rounds in 90 seconds, and sufficient ammunition to decimate the whole inhabitants of Uvalde was holed up inside Rooms 111-112. Lives that have been taken might effectively have been saved had the incident commander on the bottom ordered his officers to storm the classroom earlier, and there should be investigation into why he didn’t.
But when you realize what a bullet from an AR-15 can do to an grownup physique, then you’ll be able to perceive, if not forgive, that commander for imagining that after 100 rounds fired at shut vary, there could be no youngster left within the room to avoid wasting, even when they stormed it. No variety of heroes, no variety of good guys with weapons can adequately reply to a area of fireside like that. The perfect you are able to do is react. And you’ll by no means react in time.
College students fled and authorities helped others evacuate after a gunman entered Robb Elementary College in Uvalde on Could 24, 2022. Nineteen youngsters and two lecturers have been killed.
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Courtesy of Pete Luna/Uvalde Chief-Information
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Nearly definitely, there will probably be a requirement for accountability for that delay in doing so. But when we’re going to indict these officers, even when solely within the court docket of public opinion, then we even have an obligation to indict ourselves. Even now, earlier than the our bodies of these 19 youngsters and two lecturers are buried, there are the peerlessly predictable calls to double down on the parable of the great man with a gun. Simply as there have been after Santa Fe and El Paso and Midland-Odessa and numerous others, there are renewed calls to easily flood the zone with extra weapons, within the good and simplistic religion that untested and inexperienced civilians, lecturers, custodians will by some means miraculously come up towards wicked killers armed with weapons of battle.
That’s not a plan. That’s not a coverage. That’s theology. There are way more AR-15s and way more rounds of ammunition that may vaporize flesh, shatter bone and explode inner organs than there are heroes. And if that’s the solely response to the ever-mounting slaughter of this nation’s youngsters and its grandparents, and its congregations at worship, and its crowds at film theaters and nation music concert events, then we don’t have a prayer.
Seamus McGraw is an avid deer hunter who, from mid-October to late January, hardly ever ventures out from his dwelling within the mountains of Pennsylvania with out a rifle in his hand. Nowadays, he completely carries a .50-caliber flintlock. He’s additionally the creator of “From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter,” revealed final yr by the College of Texas Press.
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Disclosure: The College of Texas at Austin and the College of Texas Press have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full listing of them right here.
Texas Rangers rookie outfielder Wyatt Langford appeared on the GBag Nation show on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) to discuss his recent offensive surge, how he’s adjusting to the big leagues, and what kind of weight he can throw around in the weight room.
Here are some of the highlights, edited lightly for clarity.
What has been the biggest difference since you came off the IL? How eye-opening is it to get accustomed to major league pitching?
Wyatt Langford: I think a lot of it was just comfort, getting comfortable playing up here and getting accustomed to the pitching. Everyone throws hard nowadays, and they all know where to put it too.
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You’ve been very unlucky dealing with bad calls in the strike zone, how do you deal with that frustration?
Langford: It has been a little frustrating because of how frequently it has happened, but I mean it’s part of the game. I feel like I’ve handled it pretty well.
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What are the biggest differences between playing college baseball and playing in the major leagues?
Langford: I’d say the biggest difference is just playing every single day. College, you’re playing three to five days a week at the most. You’re just going about it every single day and getting your body ready to play every day.
Watch: Texas Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford blasts off with first career grand slam
How nice is it having veterans like Marcus Semien and Corey Seager and being able to see their example of dedication?
Langford: It’s been great. There’s so many guys on this team that have a lot of experience, a lot of success playing this game. Being able to talk to them and be around them helps a lot.
What’s the best advice you’ve gotten since getting to the big leagues?
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Langford: I wouldn’t say there’s really any best advice I’ve gotten. I’d say just in general, just make sure you be yourself and do what you need to do to get ready. You don’t don’t need to copy what other guys do to get ready. [Corey Seager] does his thing, [Marcus Semien] does his thing. You just got to figure out what works for you.
You’re very impressive physically, what’s the most impressive thing you could do in a weight room? Back squat?
Langford: I haven’t back squatted since my freshman year of college, so probably deadlift. The most I’ve ever done is 715 pounds over winter break at Florida. I was back home during my sophomore year.
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Bridget Townsend was just getting her start in life as a young woman in the small Texas town of Bandera when Ramiro Gonzales raped and killed her. Her mom says she was ‘a beautiful person.’
Bridget Townsend was planning for the future. The Texas 18-year-old was working full-time at a resort and eagerly waiting to hear back about an application to get into nursing school.
But on Jan. 14, 2001, a man named Ramiro Gonzales stole all that away and all the other moments and milestones that make up a life when he kidnapped, raped and murdered Bridget.
“She was a beautiful person who loved life and loved people,” her mother, Patricia Townsend, told USA TODAY on Saturday. “Every time she was with somebody she hadn’t seen in a while, she had to hug ’em … She didn’t deserve what she got.”
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Now more than 23 years later, Gonzales is set to be executed for the crime in Texas on Wednesday, which would have been Bridget’s 41st birthday. Patricia Townsend said the execution will be a “joyful occasion” for her and her family, who have been waiting so long for justice.
As Gonzales’ execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the tragic crime, who Bridget was what her family lost.
A terrible night
Bridget was at her boyfriend Joe Leal’s house that terrible night.
Leal dealt drugs and Gonzales went to his house to steal cocaine, finding Bridget there alone.
After Gonzales came in and stole some cash, Bridget started to call Leal. That’s when Gonzales overpowered her, tied her up and drove her to his grandfather’s ranch, where he raped and shot her before dumping her body in a field, according to court records.
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When Leal arrived home later that night, Bridget’s truck, purse and keys were their usual spots but he couldn’t find her anywhere and called police.
For nearly two years, no one but Gonzales knew what happened to Bridget. One day while he was serving a life sentence for the rape and kidnapping of another woman, Gonzales decided to confess to killing Bridget, leading authorities to her remains in a field in Bandera, a small town 40 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Gonzales was convicted of Bridget’s murder in September 2006.
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‘Thank God I got to see her’
Patricia Townsend last saw her daughter the same day she was killed. Townsend was working at a video store and had asked Bridget to drop by and return a video.
“Thank God I got to see her. And I told her I loved her. And I hugged her,” Townsend said.
Bridget left soon after, saying she was going to bed because she had to drive to work in the morning. Townsend told her daughter goodbye, reminding her that she loved her.
After Townsend closed the video store and went home for the night, she said she couldn’t shake the feeling that she heard Bridget call out to her: “Mom.” She tried to call Bridget but there was no answer.
“And I said, ‘Well don’t fret, Pat.’ She said she had to get up early and go to work so she’s probably sleeping,” Townsend said. “But I should have known better because always slept with her phone right next to her in case somebody called her.”
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She thought about going to check on Bridget but talked herself out of it.
“And to this day I regret not going out there,” she said. “Maybe I would have been there in time to stop him.”
Patricia Townsend gets worst news of her life
For nearly two years, Townsend spent most of her time putting up flyers about her daughter and chasing leads.
Until one night a Bandera County sheriff asked her to come to the station. Although she had been holding out hope that her daughter was alive despite the odds, she instead got the worst news of her life.
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The sheriff told Townsend that Gonzales had confessed to Bridget’s murder, had led police to her body and that he had some things he was hoping she might be able to identify.
“And I walked on down the street. I couldn’t hear it anymore,” she said.
Towsend says she didn’t even have a body to bury on Oct. 16, 2002 because Gonzales “wanted to see her body decay.”
Townsend rejected arguments from Gonzales that a childhood filled with trauma and neglect helped lead him down a path that ended in her daughter’s murder.
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“He doesn’t deserve mercy,” she said. “And his childhood should not have anything to do with it. I know a lot of people that had a hard childhood … He made his choice.”
It’s Gonzales’ own fault that he no longer has a life.
“He could be going to school or have a wife and kids,” she said. “I don’t feel sorry for him at all and I don’t want other people to feel sorry for him. Some people I feel sorry for are his grandma and grandpa that raised him.”
What has also brought comfort to Townsend amid the grief is that Gonzales is set to leave the world the same day Bridget came into it.
“When they told me June 26, I started crying, crying and crying,” she said. “That’s her birthday.”
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Instead of celebrating her daughter’s 41st birthday, she’ll drive four hours from her home in San Antonio to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville and watch Gonzales die.
Silvia Hernandez, with her hair pulled back into a long ponytail, is visible from the kitchen only when she comes to the metal-framed pass, where the server grabs plated dishes to run to customers. Her glasses are precariously balanced on the lower bridge of her nose, but she snaps them back into place as she turns to attend to the cooking at her restaurant, Taqueria Gael, in Andrews.
Crossing north five years ago was the easy part of her life’s journey, Hernandez says. Growing up in El Salto, a small, quiet town in the northern Mexican state of Durango, she worked long hours hawking street food and cooking in her parents’ restaurant. She opened her own business, a hot dog cart, as a teenager, and got married at sixteen to a husband who eventually became abusive, she says. Moving to Texas was, Hernandez believed, her way out. Once she arrived in the Permian Basin town of Andrews, she began to work at local food trucks and would feed fellow food truck employees home-cooked meals of sopa de fideo, chicken, and caldo.
One Christmas, she brought the workers a holiday meal of lengua, fries, and soup. It wasn’t much, but the six young men who had no family to spend Christmas with were delighted and thankful. “It’s one of my favorite memories,” Hernandez says. So it’s no surprise that when Hernandez visited Mexico for fifteen days, the workers in Andrews messaged and called her, pleading with her to return. To their relief, she did. Then, a year ago, she opened Taqueria Gael.
Until my recent trip, my experience with tacos in West Texas had been disappointing at best. Tex-Mex in general, and the burrito in particular, was where restaurants in the area shone—that is, until my visit to Taqueria Gael, a bastion of Mexican home cooking that stands alongside the best of Texas’s Mexican restaurants.
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The same goes for the previous business that was located inside the yellow building that houses now Taqueria Gael, near the Andrews Highway. It was called La Morena and was owned by famed curmudgeon Greg Revelez. Back in 2020, the Tex-Mex joint was more of a community hub than a good restaurant. Not that it was bad—the Kitchen Sink Burrito, a smothered package of carnitas, refried beans, fries, and pearls of yellow rice topped with melted cheese and smothered in spicy brown gravy,was one of my favorite dishes of that year. Otherwise, the food was, with all due respect, forgettable. In other words, I didn’t expect such exciting and soothing comida casera (home cooking) in the oil patch town about 45 minutes north of Odessa, much less the matron behind the taqueria.
Taqueria Gael is a symbol of Hernandez’s resilience. Through her food, Hernandez shares with customers the traditions and craft passed down through the generations of women before her as well as through a life of extreme hardships.
Exterior of Taqueria Gael in Andrews.Photograph by José R. Ralat
Hernandez’s grandmother, Teresa, was a single mother of twelve children. To support her family, the matriarch, who could neither read nor write, sold menudo and other dishes she learned from her elders and passed on to her children and grandchildren. At twelve years old, Hernandez’s mother, Modesta, moved from Durango to Mexico City to work in a hospital. About a decade later, she returned to El Salto to work in Restaurante Anita. It was at the restaurant that she met her future husband. The two were immediately inseparable and married in eight days. To help provide for the growing household, Modesta opened a small restaurant, Comedor Valeria, in the family’s living room. She sold carnitas, chicharrones, gorditas, and, of course, the clan’s specialty, menudo.
Hernandez joined the family business as a teenager when she opened a hot dog cart, which she later expanded to sell carnitas. Soon after, her troubles with her husband started. Hernandez hadn’t known the kind of man he would become: a womanizing and abusive drug addict and alcoholic, as she describes him. She dealt with it as best she could, through work. “I promised myself that my children would never know cold or poverty,” Hernandez says.
Their first child, daughter Valeria, was diagnosed with epilepsy at three months old. To pay for Valeria’s treatment, Hernandez added tamales and buñelos to her street cart’s menu. Her daughter’s epilepsy disappeared at the age of four. Four years after that, Hernandez says her husband raped and impregnated her. She gave birth to a boy, Adrian. “My son is the product of abuse, but he is a blessing. He’s my baby,” Hernandez says with joy and pride in her voice. The young man is now studying information engineering, a field that blends computer science with math. “He is a man in every sense of the word. He is responsible. He is a man of his word. He isn’t lazy, nor does he drink or smoke,” Hernandez says.
In April 1998, Hernandez’s father passed away. At this time, violence was at a disastrously high level in Mexico. Her brother was kidnapped and eventually released. On another day, her husband said he was going to work and never returned. “I was left alone to raise my kids and work harder,” she says. Hernandez continued to add dishes to her cart’s menu. She did whatever she needed to do to provide for her family. She was also once more pregnant. To her anguish, the baby was stillborn.
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As soon as she could, Hernandez began the paperwork for a visa to come to the United States. She knew however hard she worked in Mexico, it wouldn’t be enough to give her children the educations and futures she dreamed they deserved. The only option was to find work north of the Rio Grande. Finally, five years ago, she was able to settle in Andrews, where she eventually opened Taqueria Gael, named after her supportive, caring partner, whom she met while working at various food trucks in Andrews. Love and the gratitude for a better life are evident in every dish.
The tacos she serves are all tacos de guisado wrapped in soft, nixtamalized-corn tortillas that are made in-house. The green picadillo, stewed with tiny potato cubes, translucent chopped onion, and invisible but fiery chiles, was a delight. The asado verde—rough-chopped chicken blanketed in a dark green salsa—was even better and hotter. The asado rojo, plump with pork obscured by an inky red sauce, left me silent. My eyes closed, and I smiled. The barbacoa was a dark bramble peeking out from below freshly grated queso blanco. For the quesadilla, queso blanco is enveloped in a corn tortilla and cooked on the flattop until the cheese melts into a milky, stretchy consistency. It only took one bite for me to feel at home.
The pozole—deep red, almost clay-colored—was a bowl of guajillo chile–punctuated stew bobbing with tender, juicy bits of pork chop. It was a hot day when I visited Taqueria Gael, but as I recalled the voices of many women in my life, I remembered hot days are made for hot food. The small, round, Nutella-filled doughnuts, glazed and shiny in the midday sun coming through one of the restaurant’s windows, were so good. I wanted to eat them all lest I offend Hernandez, who brought them to the table herself. Alas, the stop at Taqueria Gael was one of several I had planned en route to the Panhandle. Otherwise, I would’ve lingered, asked for coffee to wash down the dessert, and likely consumed the whole plate of doughnuts.
The worst of Hernandez’s life is behind her. She has made peace with the past and how it has formed her, thanks to her children and her partner. She welcomes every customer like she’s welcoming her own children to eat. As trite as that sounds, the proof is in the amazing pozole. Eating it, I felt like I belonged in Taqueria Gael, like Hernandez was happy to see me enjoy her food. Hernandez expresses it better: “I have been able to overcome obstacles with food. Everything I cook, everything I do, I do with all my heart and with love.”