Miah Cerrillo spoke exclusively on CNN about her horrific experience that day in the classroom where the mass shooting that killed 19 of her classmates and two of her teachers took place.
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 lessons when teachers learned there was a shooter in the building, he told CNN’s “New Day.”
A teacher went to close the door, but Miah says the shooter was already there and shot through the door window.
He described everything happening so fast: his teacher returned to the classroom and the gunman followed him. She told CNN she made eye contact with one of the teachers, said “Good night,” and then shot him.
He opened fire, shooting the other teacher and many of Miah’s friends. She said the bullets flew next to her and the fragments hit her shoulders and head. The girl was later treated at the hospital and discharged with fragmentary wounds; he described to CNN that his hair is falling out now.
Miah said that after shooting the students in her class, the gunman entered through a door into an adjoining classroom. He heard screams and the sound of gunfire in that classroom. After the shootings stopped, however, he says the shooter started playing loud music, sad music, he said.
The girl and a friend managed to get her dead teacher’s phone number and called 911 for help. He said he 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 some other surviving friends. So he dipped his hands in the blood of a classmate – who was already beside him, already dead – and then anointed all the blood to make her dead.
Miah said she felt like she had been lying there for three hours, covered in the blood of her classmate, with her friends.
He told CNN he assumed at the time that police had not yet arrived at the scene.
He said he later heard about the police waiting outside the school. As he told this part of the story on CNN, he began to cry, saying that he did not understand why they did not come in and rescued them.
Miah’s mother said her daughter is traumatized and can’t sleep. The child’s parents have started a GoFundMe specifically to pay for their therapy.
In an effort to stay covered, Miah sat down for the interview wrapped in a blanket, despite the warm temperatures.
A cell phone alarm sounded accidentally during the interview and Miah was visibly nervous about the noise. Her mother said this has happened a lot, and described a previous incident in which they were in a car wash and the sound of the vacuum cleaner “completely provoked her”.
Miah was too scared to talk in front of the camera or with a man because of what she was going through, but she told CNN that she wanted to share her story so people would know what it’s like to be shot at school. He says he hopes it can help prevent a tragedy like this from happening to other children.
It’s already a “miracle baby”
Miah’s mother said she was born with a tumor in her abdomen and was not expected to live long after she was born. She underwent extensive surgery to remove the tumor at the age of three; his mother already called him a “miracle baby” and said it’s even more true now.
Her mother also told CNN that the morning of the shooting, Miah had an earache and took her out of school to go to the doctor. On the way back, they stopped at Starbucks for a treat and her mother offered to let Miah not go to school for the rest of the day, as it was one of the last days of class before the summer break. and they were just watching movies.
But Miah insisted 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.