It was Tuesday morning , in Uvalde , Texas , and Salvador Ramos was drive his truck to the local simple school . A few hr later , 21 people had been murdered . It had been thesecond - most deadly school day shot in US history : 19 of the victims had been children age between just nine and 11 years honest-to-god , while the remain two , teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia , were gunned down protect their classes .
But the tragedy had n’t ended yet . The next day , not long after delivering flower to the memorial for his married woman , Joe Garcia fell down and die . And according to his family and friend , he was vote out by a broken spirit .
We know : “ death from a broken heart ” sound impossible – like something medieval ethnic music taradiddle forge because they’dnever heard of sepsis . But it technically is potential , Dr Philip Lee , a West London advisor physician in acute medicine and medicament for the elderly , told IFLScience .
“ [ It ’s ] a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy , where a sudden jolt or grief cause heart failure and you drop dead from that , ” he excuse . “ essentially , too much noradrenaline [ or ] adrenaline , and the bottom of your inwardness check pumping in good order . ”
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is highly rare , and usually affects aged adult female . But there are plenitude of exemplar of it fall out : in 2011 , for example , in the four days travel along a massive earthquake that killed 185 people in Christchurch , New Zealand , nearly two XII peoplewere admitted to infirmary with the syndrome .
Joe Garcia ’s death was “ a authoritative subject of broken warmheartedness syndrome from what ’s been described , ” according to Dr Deepak Bhatt , a heart surgeon at Brigham and Women ’s Hospital in Boston . But it ’s impossible to know for sure before an autopsy , he toldNBC News , as the symptom and intro of takotsubo are almost - identical from a regular heart attack .
“ Either type of heart attack can be triggered by extreme emotional stress , ” he explain . “ [ The ] sorting that would happen if someone just pick up , for object lesson , that their wife had die . ”
In fact , the only room to tell the two weather asunder is by inspecting the heart itself – which is actually how takotsubo catch its name . In a “ broken tenderness ” onslaught , the left heart ventricle fills with a flush of ancestry and balloons out , so that it “ face like a sportfishing batch for devilfish from Japan , ” Leetold IFLScience .
“ Tako = octopus , ” he explained . “ Tsubo = pot . ”
The good news program is that , much like a received heart attack , takotsubo israrely fateful , with more than nine out of 10 sufferers last the ( already exceedingly rarified ) shape . Most patients – around four in five – recover without complications within a calendar month or so , and it ’s unlikely that an attack will reoccur .
For Joe Garcia , though – likeso many before him – the trauma of his long - term love ’s death may have just been too much for his heart to handle . Even worse , he may not be the last casualty of the Uvalde tragedy : multiple studieshave shown awide rangeof wellness encroachment from the deprivation of a have a go at it one that can prove fateful well after takotsubo would ordinarily move .
“ In some cases , [ takotsubo ] might be a daytime later . It might be when someone realizes : ‘ Oh , wow , my loved one in reality is bushed . They ’re really not coming back , ’ ” Bhatt toldNBC .
“ It sounds like that ’s what occur ” in this case , he say .
