** NOTE: This article contains disturbing descriptions of a fatal event. Please read at your discretion. **
An 11-year-old student at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, says she was covered in the blood of a classmate and killed to prevent being shot on Tuesday.
Miah Cerrillo told CNN on Friday that she put her hands in the blood of a classmate after the shooter left the classroom and smeared it on herself to look like she was already dead, in case the killer returned to the room.
She survived, but her aunt, Blanca Rivera, told NBC in Houston that she had seen her teacher and friends massacred.
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Cerrillo told CNN that his class was watching a movie Tuesday afternoon when his teachers received an email about a shooter at school.
One teacher “went to the door and he was right there; they made eye contact,” CNN reporter Nora Neus, who interviewed Cerrillo, said on the network.
“Miah says it all happened very quickly. She supported the teacher in the classroom. She made eye contact with the teacher again, looked her straight in the eye and said ‘good night’ and then he shot her and killed her. “
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He then turned his weapon against the classmates’ classroom, hitting the other teacher and many of Cerrillo’s friends.
After leaving the classroom, Cerrillo said he heard him enter an adjoining classroom and heard more shots and screams.
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At that moment, Cerrillo and a friend picked up his dead teacher’s phone and used it to call 911. He told CNN that he thought it took the police a long time to get to campus, but said he later learned that the police were waiting outside the school while a gunman shot dead inside.
As he recounted the events on CNN, he burst into tears, saying he did not understand why police officers did not come in to help before.
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People lay flowers at a makeshift monument outside Robb Elementary School on May 26 in Uvalde, Texas. Allison Dinner / AFP via Getty Images
The Associated Press reports that frustrated viewers urged police officers to charge at the primary school. Parents told the point of sale that they planned to charge at the school after seeing officers gather outside, but made no move to stop the killings.
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Department of Homeland Security director Steve McCraw told reporters it took 40 minutes to an hour from the time the shooter opened fire on the school until the tactical equipment fired at him, though a spokesman of the department later said they could not give a solid estimate of how long. the gunman was at school or when he was killed.
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“The bottom line is that there was law enforcement,” McCraw said. “They engaged immediately. They contained (the shooter) in the classroom.”
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Meanwhile, a police official familiar with the investigation said Border Patrol officers had trouble breaking down the classroom door and had to have a staff member open the room with a key. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
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Shortly after the shooting, it’s hard to understand exactly what happened, said Michael Dorn, chief executive of Safe Havens International, which works to make schools safer.
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“The information we have a couple of weeks after an event is usually quite different from what we receive on the first day or two. And even that is usually quite inaccurate,” Dorn said. For catastrophic events, “you usually have eight to twelve months left before you have a decent picture.”
Police walk near Robb Elementary School after a shooting on Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. Dario López-Mills / The Associated Press
Meanwhile, Cerrillo’s family said she was treated at the hospital for bullet fragments in her back, neck and shoulders and is now at home recovering.
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However, Rivera told NBC that his niece is struggling to cope emotionally with the horrors she witnessed.
“At this point, we just have to pray and ask God to help us move forward in this situation … as traumatic as it is,” Rivera said.
– With archives of the Associated Press and Reuters
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