An 11-year-old survivor of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, feared the shooter would come back to her, so she rubbed herself in her friend’s blood and played dead.
Miah Cerrillo spoke exclusively to CNN about his terrible experience that day inside the classroom where the shooting took place that killed 19 of his classmates and two of his teachers.
Miah said she and her classmates were watching the movie “Lilo and Stitch” in a classroom shared by two teachers, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia. The students finished their classes when the teachers learned there was a gunman in the building, she told the magazine’s “New Day”. CNN.
A teacher went to lock the door, but Miah said the shooter was already there – and shot through the door’s window.
She described it all happening so fast – her teacher came back into the classroom and the shooter followed her. she told the CNN that he made eye contact with one of the teachers, said “good night” and then shot her.
He opened fire, shooting the other teacher and many of Miah’s friends. She said bullets flew past her and fragments hit her shoulders and head.
The girl was later treated at the hospital and released with splinter injuries; she described to CNN that strands of her hair were falling out now.
Miah said that after shooting students in her class, the gunman went through a door in an adjacent room. She heard screams and the sound of gunfire in that classroom. After the shooting stopped, though, she says the shooter started playing loud music — sad music, she said.
The girl and a friend managed to get her dead teacher’s phone and call 911 for help. She said she told a dispatcher, “Please come… we’re in trouble.”
Miah said she was afraid the gunman would return to her classroom to kill her and a few other surviving friends.
So she dipped her hands in the blood of a classmate – who was next to her, already dead – and then smeared the blood on herself to play dead.
Miah said it felt like three hours that she was there, covered in her classmate’s blood, with her friends.
she told the CNN who assumed at that moment that the police had not yet arrived at the scene.
She said she later heard about the police waiting outside the school. As she told this part of the story to the CNN, she burst into tears, saying she just didn’t understand why they didn’t come in and rescue them.
Miah’s mother said her daughter is traumatized and can’t sleep. The child’s parents started a funding campaign on the GoFundMe platform specifically to pay for his therapy.
In an effort to stay covered, Miah sat up for the interview wrapped in a blanket despite the hot temperatures.
A cell phone alarm went off accidentally during the interview, and Miah was visibly nervous at the noise.
Her mother said this is happening a lot, and described an earlier incident where they were in a car wash and the sound of the vacuum cleaner “completely stressed her out”.
Miah was too scared to speak on camera, or with a man, because of what she experienced, but she told the CNN who wanted to share his story so people could know what it’s like to experience a school shooting. She says she hopes this can help prevent a tragedy like this from happening to other children.
Already a “miracle baby”
Miah’s mother said she was born with a tumor in her abdomen and didn’t expect to live long after birth. She underwent extensive surgery to remove the tumor at age three; her mother used to call her a “miracle baby” and said that is even more true now.
His mother also told CNN that on the morning of the shooting, Miah had an earache and took her out of school to see the doctor.
On the way back they stopped at Starbucks for a gift and her mother offered to let Miah miss school for the rest of the day as it was one of the last days of school before summer break and they were just watching movies.
But Miah insisted that she wanted to go back to school to see her friends, so her mother dropped her off at school — about an hour before the shooting.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
