Uvalde Survivor, Slain Student’s Dad Put the Heat on Rifle Manufacturer
Family members of shooting victims and survivors are striking out at the company that manufactured the firearm used to kill 21 people in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last month.
Emilia Marin, a speech pathology clerk who survived the shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24, filed a petition Thursday in the 38th Judicial District to depose Daniel Defense, the company that produces the AR-15-style rifle used by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos in the attack. The filing also requests information on the company’s marketing and sales of this kind of rifle, as well as a similar style of rifle used in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that killed 60 people.
The filing is what is known as a pre-suit deposition, which allows potential litigants to collect evidence in advance of a lawsuit. Daniel Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The father of one of the shooting victims, ten-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, has also lawyered up, demanding similar information from the gun manufacturer in a letter released Friday.
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The letter demands—among other things—information about the company’s marketing of AR-15-style rifles, particularly to teens and children; its “incitement and encouragement” of the assaultive use of these weapons; and any communications with the Uvalde shooter.
“My purpose for being now is to honor Amerie Jo’s memory,” Alfred Garza III, Amerie Jo’s father, said in a statement. “She would want me to do everything I can so this will never happen again to any other child. I have to fight her fight.”
Garza is represented by a team of three lawyers including Josh Koskoff, who represented nine Sandy Hook families in their lawsuit against the manufacturer of the rifle used in that shooting. The manufacturer, Remington, was ultimately ordered to pay the families $73 million and release internal documents to the public.
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That lawsuit could offer clues to how Uvalde families and survivors could hold Daniel Defense accountable, despite a federal law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in shooting deaths. The lawsuit focused not on the weapons themselves, but on the manufacturer’s alleged marketing of them to troubled young men like the one who killed 26 people in the 2012 shooting.
Daniel Defense has previously run marketing campaigns inspired by video games like “Call of Duty” and featuring characters from the “Star Wars” movie franchise, both of which are popular with young people. It recently deleted a tweet from May 16 featuring a picture of a baby holding a gun alongside the words: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
“Daniel Defense has said that they are praying for the Uvalde families,” Koskoff said in a statement. “They should back up those prayers with meaningful action.”
Salvador Ramos purchased a Daniel Defense rifle shortly after his 18th birthday and posted photos of it on Instagram days before the massacre.
Amerie Jo was among 19 fourth-grade students who died in the shooting carried out by Ramos, who legally purchased the Daniel Defense rifle days after he turned 18. Marin, a 25-year veteran of the school, was initially identified by authorities as having propped open the door through which Ramos entered the school. Video surveillance later revealed that she had closed the door before the shooter entered the building but it didn’t lock as it should have.
Her lawyer, Don Flanary, told CNN the confusion had only compounded her trauma from the incident. But, he added to the San Antonio News-Express: “She is definitely not the only survivor who will suffer these effects for the rest of their lives.”
“Countless children, all who were at the school that day, are no doubt experiencing the same horrific damages,” Flanary said.
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