Content warning: This article contains distressing details of gun violence.
Fourth grade student Miah Cerrillo has testified in front of the United States Congress, recounting the horror of the Ulvade school shooting that she survived after covering herself in her friend’s blood and pretending to be dead.
In an emotional testimony in a pre-recorded video, 11-year-old Miah explained that her teacher at Robb Elementary was shot in the head by the gunman, and that she covered herself in her friend’s blood and tried to stay quiet to avoid being shot herself.
“We were just watching a movie and then she got an email and then she went to go lock the door and he was in the hallway, and they made eye contact,” Cerrillo said, referring to her teacher.
“Then she went back in the room and told us to go hide and then we went to go hide behind my teacher’s desk and behind the backpacks.
“He shot her in the head and then he shot some of my classmates and the white board.”
Cerrillo explained that the gunman shot her friend and when she thought he would come back into the room, smeared her friend’s blood over herself and pretended to be dead.
“He shot my friend that was next to me and I thought he was going to come back to the room. So, I got a little blood and I put it all over me and I just stayed quiet.”
She then found her teacher’s phone, called 911 and asked for police to be sent to the classroom.
When asked what she would like to see from authorities in response to the mass shooting, Miah said she would like extra security at her school because she does not feel safe there. “I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.
Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, also testified, saying his daughter was “not the same little girl” in the aftermath of the shooting.
“She’s not the same little girl I used to play with,” he said. “Schools are not safe anymore. Something really needs to change.”
The mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Ulvade, Texas claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults.
A paediatrician from Uvalde, Dr Roy Guerrero, also spoke at the hearing, telling politicians that the only way he was able to identify some of the children who had been killed was through the remains of their clothes.
“Two children, whose bodies had been pulverised by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart. That the only clue as to their identities were the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them,” Dr Guerrero said.
Dr Guerrero told politicians they are should act like doctors, with the country as their patient.
“We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools,” he said in an emotional speech. “We are bleeding out, and you are not there.”
“My oath as a doctor means I signed up to save lives. I do my job… please, please, do yours.”