Hearse carrying El Paso shooting victim crosses border into Mexico

The body of El Paso shooting victim Elsa Mendoza de la Mora was returned to Mexico in a hearse that crossed the Puente Libre Bridge in Ciudad Juarez on Wednesday, and former students, teachers and classmates visited her family.

The 57-year-old Mendoza was one of eight Mexican victims killed in Saturday’s shooting at a Walmart store in east El Paso. The shooting left 22 people dead and dozens others injured.

She was a teacher and director of an elementary school in Juarez.

Her husband, teacher Antonio de la Mora, posted a smiling photo of the two of them on Facebook and called his late wife “the most wonderful of women.”

Jose Hernández Polo had Mendoza for 10th grade Spanish in El Paso during a period of her teaching career that took her to the other side of the border. She was patient and always looking to help her students, he said.

“She was a very good teacher,” he said. “She knew a very cultural, literary Spanish.”