Gladys Tordil, 44, was allegedly confronted by her former husband, Eulalio Tordil, as she sat in her SUV in the parking lot of her children's high school.
A teenage daughter saw her mother being gunned down in the parking lot of her high school, a friend told InsideEdition.com.
Gladys Tordil, 44, was confronted as she sat in her SUV in the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland, on Thursday evening, police said.
The woman was allegedly shot several times during an argument with her former husband Eulalio Tordil, who police say went on to shoot five other people in less than 24 hours.
Her daughter, who IE.com is not identifying because of her age, was on her way outside when the gunfire erupted, student Chris Mejia said.
“The mother was on her daily routine to come pick up her daughters. (One of the girls) was on her way to go outside and her mother was shot,” Mejia, 17, told IE.com.
The frantic daughter tried to reach her mom, but a friend stopped her and kept her inside the building, he said.
“She was running up to the door and somebody else held her back,” he said. “That student started crying and went to the auditorium to tell other people what happened, and the school went into lockdown.”
Mejia was playing tennis when the chaos unfolded, only realizing what the loud noise he heard was after spotting a bloodied man.
“A parent of one of the students here had been shot,” he said. The man had tried to intervene and help Gladys Tordil when he Eulalio Tordil allegedly fired at him, police said.
Authorities brought everyone back inside the school, where they were kept for about two hours before being allowed to leave the building.
“The girls were kept in the library. They were escorted there and were under very heavy protection,” he said. “He wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near (Gladys) or her daughters.”
Gladys Tordil had received a no-contact order in March that required her estranged husband to keep his distance. After the order was served, he was put on administrative leave from his job at Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service.
“I was not very aware of the situation going on at home, but apparently it wasn’t a very good situation,” Mejia said, saying that Eulalio Tordil was the girls’ stepfather.
At a loss as to what to do for his friends, Mejia took to social media. He created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the girls, who were preparing to head off to college next year.
“Their mother was their primary source of income. They don’t have anyone else here,” Mejia noted, saying that the rest of their family is based in the Philippines. “We were all just worried about them. It was a very emotional and stressful time.”
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When he told one of the teens about the page, she was overcome with emotion, he said.
“She was very thankful, saying we’re like the best friends ever, and she started breaking down,” Mejia said.
It’s a meaningful gesture for young women whose lives have been devastated.
“People have been saying she was a very amazing woman. She was always happy, always singing and dancing,” Mejia said of the beloved chemistry teacher, who taught at a different high school than where her daughters attended.
“Her (classroom) door is full of sticky notes from students, and there’s a ton of flowers and balloons inside her classroom,” he said.
Eulalio Tordil was arrested Friday. After allegedly shooting four more people, two of them fatally, in incidents only minutes apart earlier that day, he spent the afternoon at a nearby shopping center, police said.
He ate at a Boston Market for about an hour and dipped into neighboring businesses, including a Dunkin Donuts, before plainclothes officers took him into custody without incident, cops said.
“I was very glad he was arrested, to say the least,” Mejia said, left nearly speechless by the thought of what his friends are going through.
“You know, it’s teacher appreciation week, Mother’s Day weekend is coming up, prom is next week and we’re graduating this month… for this to happen… I really, really, really want to see justice served.”
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