Miah Cerrillo recalls how she called 911 on her dead mentor’s phone.
Washington:
An 11-year-old girl told horrified lawmakers Wednesday that she smeared herself in the blood of her murdered classmate to play dead in the most chilling series of mass shootings. move America.
Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, told a House of Representatives committee of the moment when 19 students and two of her teachers were killed by a teenage gunman last month. before.
She recalled how her class had been watching a movie and arguing behind the teacher’s desk and their backpacks when the shooter burst into the room.
“He… told my teacher ‘good night’ and then shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard,” Miah said in an interview. Short but painful pre-recorded questions.
“When I went to my backpack, he shot my friend who was sitting next to me and I thought he was going back to the room so I took some blood and smeared it all over.”
Miah recalls how she remained completely silent, before grabbing her dead teacher’s cell phone when the moment came and dialing 911.
“I told her we needed help – and (we needed) to see the police in our classroom,” she said.
Police in Uvalde launched intense surveillance after discovering that more than a dozen officers had been waiting outside the door of Miah’s classroom and doing nothing as the children lay dead or dead.
Miah was asked what she wanted to see after the attack.
“For security,” she said, confirming that she feared a mass shooter might target her school again.
“I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.
‘Tears apart’ by gunfire
Miah – who recounted the shooting that left some lawmakers in tears or wide-eyed in disbelief – is having a nightmare and is still recovering from shrapnel in the back, according to her father Miguel Cerrillo.
“She’s not like the little girl I used to play with,” he told the committee.
Her testimony comes as Congress faces growing pressure to respond to gun violence – and in particular mass shootings – across the country.
The massacres at Miah’s school and days earlier at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York sent shockwaves across the country, prompting urgent calls for gun safety reform.
The House Oversight and Reform Commission also heard from the mother of Lexi Rubio, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School, who had been killed.
“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She’s smart, kind and good at sports,” Kimberly Rubio said via a video link, wiping tears from her eyes as she sat next to her husband Felix.
“She’s quiet, shy, unless she has a reason to. When she’s right, as usual, she stands her ground. She’s tough, outspoken, her voice steady. So today we support Lexi and like her voice, we demand action.”
Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician who treated several victims in Uvalde, said of meeting “two children whose bodies were pulverized by bullets hitting them, decapitated and their flesh ripped apart.”
‘Elected to protect us’
A cross-party group of senators is working on a narrow set of controls that could grow into their first serious attempt at gun regulation reform in decades.
The package will increase funding for mental health and school security services, expand the scope of background checks, and encourage states to develop so-called “red flag laws” that allow for collect weapons from individuals deemed a threat.
But it doesn’t include an assault weapons ban or a universal background check, meaning it won’t live up to the expectations of President Joe Biden, progressive Democrats and anti-riot activists. anti-gun force.
And even this compromise deal must run an equally divided Senate and win the votes of at least 10 Republicans, most of whom are against substantial regulatory reform.
On the other side of the Capitol, House Democrats passed a much broader package of proposals later in the day that includes raising the purchase age for most semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. .
However, those proposals went nowhere – they didn’t have the 60 votes they needed to advance to the Senate. But Democratic leadership has wanted to act after the recent spate of mass shootings.
Garnell Whitfield Jr, son of Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield, 86, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on white extremist violence.
“You expect us to keep forgiving and forgetting again and again? And what are you doing? You were elected to protect us and protect our way of life,” the fire commissioner retired said in an emotional appeal to senators.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
