Viral News
Texas Army Veteran Volunteers To Stand Guard At The Entrance Of His Daughter’s School
Texas Army Veteran Volunteers To Stand Guard At The Entrance Of His Daughter’s School
A Texas Army veteran has taken it upon himself to guard his daughter’s elementary school following the massacre in Uvalde, which saw 19 young children and two teachers slaughtered last week.
Ed Chelby said he was having trouble sleeping in the aftermath of Tuesday’s devastating school shooting.
He emailed the superintendent of the Killeen Independent School District at 1am to see if he could guard outside Saegert Elementary – where his daughter goes to school and his wife works as a school nurse.
Chelby, who has a security background, was told he could and now just does that, while unarmed. A snap of him standing guard was posted online by a grateful mom earlier this week, and quickly went viral.
‘I can’t let this go,’ Chelby told KWTX. ‘I said I would just be out there unarmed to let people know that I’m watching. Let the parents have a little bit of relief.’
View this post on Instagram
To his surprise, KWTX reported, the superintendent told Chelby he could stand guard by the main entrance – and so for the last two days of the school year, he was seen patrolling outside the school about four hours from Uvalde. ‘I’ve had a lot of emotional people come up to me,’ said Chelby – who served in the Army for 11 years and has a background in security.
‘They didn’t want to send their kids to school,’ he said of his fellow parents. ‘They struggled with sending their kids to school. ‘And I told them, I was like, “I got them.”
‘We’re all struggling with that,’ he admitted. ‘You don’t know if you should send your kid to school.
‘You want them to get their education and their experiences of the last days of school, but you want to protect them with everything you got.’ A photo of Chelby standing outside the school has since gone viral on social media, and Eli Lopez, the principal of the school, said his efforts were overwhelmingly appreciated by parents and students for restoring some sense of security.
‘Him standing in front of the school, that’s reassuring,’ said one mother, Samantha Longfeather-Locke, who posted the photo of him online
You must be logged in to post a comment logged in Login