Local funeral homes refused to handle services for Uvalde gunman after elementary school shooting, county coroner says

• Local funeral homes did not want to perform the funeral service of the Uvalde school gunman.
• The county coroner said the gunman's body was stored at a morgue for three weeks.

Local funeral homes did not want to perform a funeral service for the Uvalde, Texas, gunman who opened fire at Robb Elementary School in May, the county coroner said.

"Once they got to him, the funeral homes in town said, 'We don't want to deal with him,'" Eulalio "Lalo" Diaz Jr. — the Uvalde County Justice of the Peace and de facto county coroner — told the Houston Chronicle.

The Chronicle reported that local funeral homes did not want to assume the notoriety that might come with handling the gunman's service and worried about how local families might react.

In turn, Diaz told the Chronicle that he had to store the gunman's body for weeks before an out-of-town funeral home stepped in to help handle his remains.

"I had to store him for three weeks," Diaz said. "As the funerals for the victims were going on, I was still dealing with what to do with him. It was a stressful time."

Diaz added that his family had trouble agreeing on what to do with his body.

"It took three, three-and-a-half weeks to get him released to the family," Diaz said. "They were fighting with each other."

Once the body was released to the gunman's family, it was relocated to Castle Ridge in Crystal City, Texas, which handled his funeral, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Diaz did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The gunman was then cremated in Downtown San Antonio, according to his death report, the Chronicle reported.

On May 24, the 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, killing 19 students and two teachers. More than an hour after the gunman entered the school, police shot and killed him.

Before to his shooting spree at the school, he shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at her home. She survived the attack and was released from the hospital at the end of June, according to the Chronicle.