For the first time, one of the surviving children spoke about the killing spree in Uvalde. Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo said she covered herself in blood from a corpse and pretended to be dead, hoping not to be shot.
After the killing spree in Uvalde, one of the surviving children spoke publicly about the attack and his rescue for the first time. Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo tearfully told CNN how she smeared herself with the blood of a dead classmate and pretended to be dead to escape the shooter. She and a classmate then used her killed teacher’s cell phone and called the police to ask them to stop the shooter.
She and her classmates were watching the cartoon ‘Lilo and Stitch’ on Tuesday when teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia learned there was a shooter at school, Miah Cerrillo told a CNN reporter in testimony that was not filmed. The eleven-year-old says she has been afraid of men since the cruel attack and therefore only wanted to talk to one woman with her mother. She also didn’t want to be filmed. But the whole world should know what exactly happened, she told the CNN reporter.
One of the teachers tried to close the classroom door, but the shooter was already there, the girl reported. Everything went very quickly. According to Miah Cerrillo, the perpetrator looked at the teacher and said “good night”. Then he shot her and aimed at her colleague and some students. Miah Cerrillo was injured in the shoulder and head by shrapnel.
Uvalde: Sagittarius turned on “sad music” through speakers
After that, the student continued, the shooter opened a door to the neighboring classroom. She heard gunshots and screams. The shooter turned on music through speakers – “sad music,” as Miah Cerrillo says. When asked what exactly she meant by that, the eleven-year-old said: Music like “I want people to die.”
Fearing that the shooter would return to her class, she says she dipped her hands in the blood of a classmate whose corpse was lying next to her, to smear herself with it and pretend to be dead.
The girl and a friend managed to call the police with the dead teacher’s phone: “Please come, please come,” they pleaded when they called, the eleven-year-old reported. At that point, she assumed the police hadn’t arrived at the scene. Later she learned from adults that the police were already there. “Why didn’t they come in, why didn’t they save us?” she asked the CNN reporter, crying.
In the attack on an elementary school in the small Texas town of Uvalde, an 18-year-old shot two teachers and 19 children. The police have now admitted to mistakes. Texas Public Safety Superintendent Steven McCraw said in Uvalde it was the “wrong decision” not to earlier storm the classroom where the gunman was holed up with children.
Miah Cerrillo’s hair has been falling out since that horrible day at school. Her mother, Abigale Veloz, set up a fundraising website to fund the medical and psychological help her daughter needed after the massacre. “She will need a lot of help to cope with the trauma she is going through,” Veloz wrote. As of Saturday morning, more than $340,000 had already been raised. This far exceeded the original goal of $10,000.
