I used my friend’s blood to play dead, shooting survivor tells Congress
Girl, 11, describes horror of seeing teachers and pupils killed as Uvalde families plead for gun control
A CHILD survivor of the Uvalde school shooting has told Congress that she escaped by smearing a murdered friend’s blood over herself to play dead.
The testimony from Miah Cerrillo, 11, came as US politicians heard demands from families for action on gun control.
The mother of Lexi Rubio, 10, one of Miah’s classmates who died, said she would be forever “haunted”, and asked why some people think “guns are more important than children”.
Miah, a bespectacled fourth-grader, spoke calmly and forcefully in a video played to a gun violence hearing held by a committee of the House of Representatives.
She recounted the horror in which 19 fellow pupils and two teachers were shot dead by an 18-year-old gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.
Miah said: “We were just watching a movie and then she [my teacher] got an email ... she went to lock the door and he [the gunman] was in the hallway, and they made eye contact ... she went back in the room and told us go hide.”
The children, including Miah, hid behind their teacher’s desk and some backpacks. “He shot my teacher, and told my teacher ‘goodnight’ and shot her in the head,” Miah said. “Then, he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard.”
She added: “When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend that was next to me. I thought he was going to come back to the room so I grabbed her blood and put it all over me, and just stayed quiet. Then I got my teacher’s phone and called 911. I told her [the dispatcher] that we needed help and to send the police in our classroom.”
In tears, Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, appeared in person to tell the hearing his daughter was “not the same” since the shooting. He said: “She’s not the same little girl that I used to play with, hang around with, and do everything. She was daddy’s little girl ... I wish something would change, not only for our kids but every little kid ... because schools are not safe anymore.”
Kimberly Rubio, the mother of Lexi Rubio, told the hearing: “Today, we stand for Lexi, and, as her voice, we demand action.”
Dr Roy Guerrero, a paediatrician who attended to several of the victims, said he saw “two children whose bodies had been pulverised by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart”.
The politicians were also shown a chart on how deaths by firearms in the United States dwarf those in any other G7 country.
A bipartisan group of US senators is working on a limited set of gun control proposals that could see new “red flag” laws intended to stop the purchase of firearms by people judged to be a risk.