San Angelo's Connection With the Uvalde Tragedy Impacts a Broken Family With Broken Hearts

SAN ANGELO, TX — Uziyah Garcia was known as “Uzi” to friends and family. He was born on August 13, 2011 to a broken home in San Angelo. His dad has been in and out of prison at least twice for drugs. His mom, also in and out of prison, lost custody of Uzi in San Angelo in a CPS case. Uzi was mostly raised by his grandparents in San Angelo, according to Uzi’s aunt and Uzi’s mom’s half sister Nikki Cross of Uvalde.

“I’d say Uzi and his siblings lived a total of two years consecutively with their parents,” Nikki said.

Last summer, Uzi’s grandmother in San Angelo was hospitalized and had major health problems. The grandfather agreed to grant custody of Uzi to Aunt Nikki. Uzi started school at Robb Elementary in Uvalde in August 2021.

Nikki and husband Brett Cross offered Uzi and his two siblings a way out of the downward path Uzi’s parents were headed. Drugs, prison, and street life has defined the parents’ life. The Cross family gave Uzi and siblings a middle class, stable life. Sergio was granted monthly visitation rights. Nikki said he had visited his children four times since August of last year.

“Each time they cussed me and tried to hold the kids instead of drop them off. It was traumatic to the kids,” she said.

Nikki didn’t know Sergio until after gaining custody of her sister’s children.

There was one tender aspect of the children’s relationship with their father. “He did communicate through text with the kids and they liked that,” Nikki said. “I wish he would’ve been a more active father for them but he just simply didn’t care.”

Despite his rough upbringing, Nikki said Uzi was becoming his own man while living in Uvalde. At 10 years old, this is a very fragile time in the life of a boy. If you’re a man, you know. We’ve been there, too.

“Uzi really cared about the people around him. He always wanted to help others,” Nikki said. Like most 10 year olds in 2022, Uzi loved video games. He told Nikki he wanted to be a “gamer” when he grew up. When Nikki explained that gamers don’t make much money, Uzi changed his mind. “Well then, I want to be a policeman,” Nikki said Uzi told her.

On the tragic day of the shooting, May 24, 2022, Nikki was among the parents outside the school. The shooter was inside Uzi’s classroom.

“He was inside my baby's classroom for an hour. They were talking to him. We begged them (police) to go inside and save our babies. They did nothing,” Nikki said.

For hours after the shooter was killed, Brett and Nikki held onto hope that Uzi had somehow escaped with others who were able to leave. Brett made several desperate posts on Facebook seeking help finding his adopted son.

After seven hours, the tragic news was delivered. Uzi was among the victims of the shooting.

Biological dad Sergio Garcia showed up days later to offer a swab for his DNA to verify kinship. The funeral home, Rushing-Estes-Knowles Mortuary, Inc., in Uvalde, is handling all of the children’s funerals for free.

Nikki said there are a dozen GoFundMe pages set up in Uzi’s name. None of them are intended to go towards the funeral nor has Nikki authorized them. One of the GoFundMe pages attracted $30,000 in donations. The FBI, working with the Texas Rangers, have managed to get most of the donation pages taken down and they have frozen the $30,000 one page raised, Nikki said.

As for Brett and Nikki, “We don’t care for the donations. This community has been absolutely amazing.” They did put up a GoFundMe page while fighting the fake pages. The intent was to offer a legitimate option versus the others purportedly set up by Uzi’s father. The Cross's have since taken that page down.

I told Nikki she was a special saint for raising the Garcia children including Uzi.

“Thank you for that. But I honestly just love them and wanted to be the parent that they needed. I am proud to say Uzi was an amazing little boy and I got to watch him really come into his own while he was here,” she said.

The Cross family said they are offering Uzi’s dad half of the ashes. “Out of respect for his father, we will provide half the ashes for a service in San Angelo should Uzi's father decide to have one,” Nikki said.