She did the work of a hero. But this teacher says she’s been portrayed as a villain for 3 years

Uvalde, Texas —

When teacher Amy Marin-Franco saw a pickup truck crash in a ditch outside her school, her first thought was to get help.

When a young man got out of the truck with a gun, she abruptly pivoted — she still wanted to get help, but now to protect the children and staff inside her school.

“I wasn’t a coward,” she told CNN.

But in the words of law enforcement, she became something worse: someone who had failed to follow protocol and unwittingly helped a murderous teen enter an elementary school where he killed 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest school shooting for a decade.

Except it wasn’t true.

And although officials walked back their denunciation of her a few days later, Marin-Franco says the doubts have lingered around her ever since, from neighbor and st