Uvalde Parents Snub Greg Abbott, Say Their Daughter Didn't Like Him

The parents of Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, one of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, declined a request for a meeting by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, saying their daughter didn't "even like him."

After being struck by tragedy, some of the parents of the 19 children killed in the shooting at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School are asking for concrete action that will prevent another such massacre from happening again in the future.

The parents of Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, a 10-year-old who was killed on Tuesday when 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos attacked the school where she studied, are one set of parents calling for action.

"We live in this really small town in this red state, and everyone keeps telling us, you know, that it's not the time to be political, but it is — it is," Lexi's mother Kimberly Rubio told the New York Times. "Don't let this happen to anybody else," she added.

Kimberly Rubio, a senior history major at St. Mary's University, said she was contacted by the office of the Texas governor on Wednesday, asking if she and her husband were willing to meet Abbott. They refused. Kimberly Rubio told the New York Times that her first thought upon receiving the request was that Lexi didn't even like the governor.

"She was really little, but we talked about this stuff at home," she told the newspaper.

Lindsey Wieck, a faculty member of the San Antonio university attended by Kimberly Rubio, has set up a GoFundMe fundraiser for the family.

Lexi's parents said their daughter was an excellent student, collecting all straight A's. On the same day of the shooting, she was reportedly given an honor roll award for her grades in a ceremony attended by her parents.

A CNN reporter who was on the scene after the shooting said Kimberly Rubio kept saying she had made a mistake leaving her daughter behind when she left the school only minutes before Ramos entered the building.

Lexi wanted to be a lawyer, her parents told the New York Times. She loved softball and basketball, her parents said.

"Our baby wanted to be a lawyer; she wanted to make a difference," her father Felix Rubio told the New York Times. "Please make sure she makes one now."

Felix Rubio, a Uvalde County Sheriff's officer, is now advocating for the purchase of AR-15 rifles, such as the ones used by Salvador Ramos in Uvalde, to be outlawed, writes the newspaper. In an interview with CNN, Felix Rubio said "I've had enough with the guns, I don't want my daughter's name to be just another name."

"Hopefully something gets resolved," he said, talking about gun violence. "This is enough, no one else needs to go through this."

The shooting has reignited a debate over gun safety legislation, with the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012, the deadliest in American history, joining calls from the parents of the Uvalde victims for authorities to act on gun control.

Newsweek reached out to Abbot's press office for comment.