Speaking out for the first time, an El Paso mom recounts the moments from a bank inside the Walmart where 23 people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured in 2019. Via elpasomatters:
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Jamie was 23, nearly nine months pregnant and a personal banker at First Convenience helping Anchondo with a transaction when a customer at the store’s cash registers nearby screamed, “Oh my God, he’s shooting!” Jamie is speaking out publicly for the first time. Not only had she not been ready to tell her story, she said, but the few people who knew she survived the shooting had never really asked much about that day.Jamie reads a dedication plaque at the Healing Garden on the evening of July 27. In 2019, Jamie was pregnant and an employee at a bank inside of Walmart when the shooting occurred.
“They were really, really nice to me so I was trying to help them as much as I could,” Jamie recalled. She related to them as young parents working to better their lives. Several news reports state the Walmart store manager and other store employees ushered people to the back of the store so they could exit safely through the back doors.“Suddenly everybody started running toward my manager’s office,” Jamie said, describing the office as having a glass facade, including two narrow glass doors.
The youngest victim of the shooting, Amir was just 15 and about to start his sophomore year at Horizon High School. He had accompanied his uncle, Lizarde, then a 23-year-old construction worker, to the store that day. Lizarde was cashing his paycheck to buy school supplies and clothes for Amir — whom he considered hisJamie never saw the shooter.
“We were there just holding hands. We were all crying. One of my co-workers was praying. He asked if it was OK that he prayed out loud. One was quietly calling 911.” “I told her, ‘No, no you’re not. Trust in Jehovah,’” Lourdes said in Spanish. “Then I remember hearing the police saying, ‘Police! Police!’”Police arrived on the scene at 10:45 a.m. — six minutes after the first call came in.
“I think it was el muchachito,” Jamie said, referring to the “young boy” Amir. She didn’t see his face, but thought she recognized his body laying in a pool of blood. She paused and took a deep breath. “I think it was his uncle next to him screaming, ‘Noooo!’ in a desperate voice. I will never forget that.”
She vaguely remembers seeing Jordan on the floor, though the baby was no longer in the carrier she was wearing.Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso MattersWhen they arrived at the scene, Lourdes turned to Alex. “Go find her,” she told him.At some point, she doesn’t quite remember, El Paso Fire Department paramedics pushed Jamie and the other bank employees out of Walmart on aluminum platform carts from Sam’s Club next door.
It would be several hours before Lourdes saw her daughter again. She chose to wait before calling her husband, Jaime, a truck driver who was on the road on the way home. She scrolled social media and saw conflicting news reports about what was happening, including that the shooter had been arrested just blocks away.“You have no idea how strong my faith is,” said Lourdes, a Jehovah’s Witness. “Only God helps us through these times. I put everything in His hands.
Julian, who will soon celebrate his third birthday, wears a bracelet given to him by his grandmother as he visits the Healing Garden on July 27. Julian's mother, Jamie, was just weeks away from giving birth when she witnessed the Walmart shooting in 2019.Two weeks after the shooting, Jamie had her first son, Julian. It was an intense, emotional 38-hour long labor that ended in her having to undergo a cesarean section.
Loud noises made her jumpy. She didn’t like being around people. Strangers made her nervous. And fireworks — well, just forget fireworks. For some time, she felt angry and fearful. So much so, those emotions at times overpowered the happiness she felt being a first-time mom. She didn’t want to let anyone come near her baby, and had to turn friends and family away at times.