An 11-year-old Uvalde shooting survivor begged Congress on Wednesday to not let another school massacre happen again – detailing how she hid behind a desk and covered herself in blood as the gunman stalked her classroom.
Miah Cerrillo was in her fourth-grade class at Robb Elementary School on 24 May when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 students and two teachers after shooting his grandmother just blocks away.
In videotaped testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, she described not only playing dead but also using a fatally injured teacher’s phone to call 911.
“I told [the dispatcher] that we need help and to send the police,” the fourth-grader told the committee.
She said her teacher had been notified about the shooter and told students to hide just moments before he arrived at the door.
“We were just watching TV, and then she got an email – and then she went to go lock the door, and he was in the hallway,” the 11-year-old said. “And they made eye contact.”
The teacher returned to the room and “we went to go hide behind my teacher’s desk and behind the backpacks, and then he shot the little window” of the door, she said.
“Then he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard … he shot my friend that was next to me, and I thought he was going to come back to the room. So I got the blood and put it all over me.”
She said Wednesday that she no longer felt safe and was terrified such a shooting would happen again.
Her father, speaking in person in front of the House Oversight Committee, said that she is “not the same little girl that I used to play with, hang around with … because she was daddy’s little girl,” he said.
“I have five kids, and she’s the middle child, so I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Because I think, I would’ve lost my baby girl.”
He added: “I wish something would change, not only for our kids but every single kid in the world, because schools are not safe anymore.
“Something needs to really change.”
His daughter and the other students were in the school with the shooter for more than an hour before authorities eventually burst in and killed Ramos, a time lapse that has prompted serious questions and outrage.
The 11-year-old told CNN Ramos played sad music during the attack, describing it as “I want people to die music,” according to the producer who interviewed her.
Kimberly and Felix Rubio testified via video Wednesday before Congress, just weeks after their daughter, Lexi, was killed in the Uvalde school massacre
“I heard the grownups later say the police were outside and that they weren’t coming in,” producer Nora Nous said the child told her. “Why didn’t they come in? Why didn’t they save us?”
The fourth-grader is traumatised since the event, her family says, and they’ve started a GoFundMe to help with therapy and medical expenses; it has already raised nearly $470,000, far more than the listed $10,000 goal.
Following the Cerrillos’ testimony, Congress heard from Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, was killed during the shooting as well.
They also appeared via video, and Ms Rubio made an emotional, tearful plea to the committee as she described her daughter and the tragic events of 24 May.
Felix and Kimberly Rubio, pictured with their daughter, 10-year-old Lexi, who was killed on 24 May while in a fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde
Zeneta Everhart, whose son was injured in the May Buffalo supermarket shooting , said she planned to talk to Congress about her son, gun reform and education
