Vann McElroy doesn’t pass by Robb Elementary every day, but he lives close enough to where a simple drive anywhere into town can take him past the school. And that’s the very circumstance the former NFL safety—an All-Pro four times and a Super Bowl champion for the Raiders in the ’80s—found himself in the morning of May 24.
“It’s bizarre, but I decided to go over and eat at Vasquez. I don’t even know why. I was just by myself, and they have the greatest enchiladas on the planet,” he says. “So I take off and I always go the back way when I’m headed that direction. And I always go by Robb when I’m going over there. As I was driving through, I began to notice the exits that would be going in and out of the school. There were starting to be lines of cars, and then I began to notice police cars and the lights flashing.
“And then behind me on both sides, you saw policemen, highway patrolmen; they all had their lights on, just flying in from every road you can imagine. I had no clue what was going on at the time. I’m just going, .”
McElroy drove around a little more. The traffic was swelling. And once it stopped, he spotted a couple on the sidewalk and asked them what was causing the commotion.
, they said.
The seriousness of the situation hadn’t even sunk in when McElroy looked around and saw more cruisers from the police, border patrol, sheriff's office and highway department. He pulled over and furiously started to send texts, trying to make sure his family and friends were O.K., including his 8-year-old grandson, William Vann McElroy III, a second-grader at Anthon Elementary across town.
“Anthon is just a little ways away from Robb; it’s not far at all,” McElroy says. “It could have just as easily been that school.”
On May 24, McElroy wasn’t the local football hero who’d started a successful sports agency out of the ranch he and his wife built on the outskirts of town. He was just Vann from Uvalde, Texas, another stunned citizen with deep, lasting ties to a hometown that would never be the same, doing his best to come to grips with what was happening in his backyard.
