A teacher who was falsely accused of leaving a school door open on the day of the May 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, said she is unable to claim disability insurance, adding that two years after the attack, “I am still not OK.”
Emilia “Amy” Marin posted a TikTok video over the weekend to explain her struggles with workers compensation and insurance.
“I am the teacher that was blamed for leaving the door open. I know the truth, and I know what I did,” she said, tearing up. “For two years, I’ve been struggling in every which way that you could think of.”
She said that she had been receiving workers comp but that at the end of May — the two-year mark of the shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two teachers — the workers comp ended. Marin said she then “applied for disability through my work” and received a denial last week, but that she plans to appeal. She said she is seeking disability money to go to her orthopedic doctor, adding that she hurt her foot while running and hiding on the day of the shooting.
Marin, who had been one of the people to call 911 about the gunman, said she is still employed with the local school district, but has “not returned to work” since the attack.
“As a victim and survivor of this mass shooting, I feel that I’ve been treated like the bad person,” she said. “Everything that I apply for, I get denied. I don’t understand how they can think that I’m going to heal if every time I apply for something, I’m denied. How am I supposed to heal?”
In the days following the shooting, Col. Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said an unnamed teacher had left a door propped open and that’s how the gunman was able to get inside the school. His assertion was retracted a few days later, but the damage was done, as people had already linked McCraw’s claim to to Marin. She told ABC News in October 2022 that she was struggling with post-traumatic stress.
“I died that day,” Marin told ABC News. “Right now, I’m lost. Sometimes I go into a dark place. And it’s hard when I’m there, but … I’m a fighter. I will be okay. I’m going to learn to live with this.”
She added that “what I go through, McCraw doesn’t know. Nobody knows. But it was very easy for him to point the finger at me.” Marin said she even felt that, given her “unbearable” pain since the attack, it would’ve been better if she’d been shot.
“And when you have people who are higher up in ranks like McCraw, you would think that they know their job well. He has no idea what his words did,” she said.
Nearly 400 law enforcement officials arrived on the scene amid the attack, and after 77 minutes they confronted the gunman. McCraw has called their response an “abject failure” and Pete Arredondo, the former police chief of the school district, was indicted on child endangerment charges earlier this year. He pleaded not guilty.
Marin said in her TikTok video that she is “not giving up” on claiming disability insurance.
“I want the world to see that as a victim and a survivor, two years later I am still not OK,” she said. “And instead of being denied, somebody needs to show compassion and say, ‘We’re here to help you.’”
