Miah Cerillo, an 11-year-old Uvalde, Texas, survivor, described the May 24 shooting inside Robb Elementary School in a pre-recorded testimony before Congress on Wednesday.
Cerillo said her fourth-grade class was in the midst of watching a movie when her teacher received an email that a gunman had entered the building. She revealed the teacher and the suspected gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, made eye contact as the teacher attempted to lock the classroom door.
“She went back in the room and told us to go hide,” she said. “And then we went to go hide behind my teacher’s desk and behind the backpacks. And then he shot the little window and then he went through the other classroom.”
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Ramos entered Cerillo’s classroom through an adjoining door to another room and shot her teacher in the head, telling her “goodnight,” Cerillo recounted. He also shot children and the white board, she said. (RELATED: ‘More Could Have Been Done’: Authorities Investigating Police Response To Texas School Shooting)
She described smearing blood and playing dead after Ramos shot her friend sitting next her.
“I thought he was going to come back to the room,” she said. “So I grabbed the blood, and I put it all over me.”
The 11-year-old said she grabbed her teacher’s phone and called 911 to alert them that they needed help and to send the police.
Cerillo said she wants more security and does not feel safe at school, saying she “doesn’t want it to happen again.” She told the interviewer she believes this incident will repeat itself.
Cerillo’s aunt, Blanca Rivera, previously told KPRC that Cerillo smeared her friend’s blood on herself and played dead to survive the shooting that killed 19 children and two fourth-grade teachers. She was not shot but was hospitalized with injuries, including bullet fragments in her back, Rivera said.
Her father, Miguel, told the Washington Post that he panicked when he saw an officer carrying his daughter out of the building covered in blood.
Reports found that officers waited over an hour before breaching the classroom where Ramos had been barricaded. Law enforcement entered the school at 11:35 a.m. but did not confront the shooter in the classroom until around 12:50 p.m., according to The New York Times. Children repeatedly called 911 pleading for police to arrive, with one child reportedly telling the emergency line at 12:16 p.m. that eight or nine students were still alive.
The Department of Justice recently launched an investigation to review the “actions and responses” by police during the shooting.
