The mother of a 10-year-old girl killed in one of the nation’s most recent—and deadliest—mass shootings testified Wednesday in an emotional hearing before a House panel, pleading with lawmakers to do something about the seemingly intractable epidemic of gun violence in America.
Fighting back tears, Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was fatally shot by a teenage gunman who stormed Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last month, described the frantic search for her child among the wounded that day. But while her son was one of the lucky survivors, Lexi didn’t make it, she told the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
That morning, Rubio, a local journalist, and her husband Felix, a cop, watched Lexi receive a Good Citizen Award at school and get recognized in an honor roll presentation for making straight A’s.
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“At the conclusion of the ceremony, we took photos with her before asking her to pose for a picture with her teacher, Mr. Reyes,” Rubio said via video link. “That photo, her last photo ever, was taken at approximately 10:54 a.m. To celebrate, we promised to get her ice cream that evening, told her we loved her, and we would pick her up after school. I can still see her walking with us toward the exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise. And then we left. I left my daughter at that school, and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
A few minutes later, the shooting started. Soon, 19 children and two teachers would be dead.
Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician from Uvalde, also spoke on Wednesday about treating children “whose bodies have been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart.”
Miah Cerillo, a fourth-grader who played dead by smearing a classmate’s blood on herself, escaped death that day. Guerrero described seeing Miah in the ER, wearing a white Lilo and Stitch shirt, “covered in blood, and…her shoulder was bleeding from a shrapnel injury.”
“Her face was still still clearly in shock, but her whole body was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through it,” said Guerrero.
Appearing by video, Miah, 11, recounted the experience of finding herself caught in the middle of unthinkable bloodshed.
“We went to go hide behind my teacher’s desk and behind the backpacks,” Miah said, explaining that the gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, then shot out a small window in the door and went back and forth between her classroom and the one next door. When he returned, Ramos “shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard,” said Miah.
“He told my teacher goodnight, and shot her in the head,” she said. “When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend… and I thought he was going to come back to the room, so I grabbed blood and put it all over me.”
Miah said she no longer feels safe at school, and that she thinks it is “going to happen again.”
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the committee’s chairwoman, noted that there have been more than 200 mass shootings so far in 2022 alone. The fatal shootings that continue across the nation are a “uniquely American tragedy,” said Maloney, adding that “other countries pass sensible gun safety laws and protect their children.”
Between 2009 and 2018, the U.S. had 288 school shootings. All the other G7 countries combined—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK—had just five during that same period.
“Some of my colleagues across the aisle have blamed the violence on mental illness,” Maloney continued. “They have blamed violent video games. They have blamed family values. They have even blamed open doors. They have blamed everything but guns.”
In her own testimony, Zeneta Everhart, the mother of Zaire Goodman, 20, who survived a May mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket by a white supremacist with a semi-automatic rifle, said, “The 18-year-old terrorist who stormed into my community armed with an AR-15, killing 10 people and injuring three others, received the shotgun from his parents for a 16th birthday present. For Zaire’s 16th birthday, I bought him a few video games, some headphones, a pizza, and a cake.”
Everhart begged the committee to pass “common sense gun laws,” which she argued should not hinge upon one’s personal beliefs.
“You are elected because you have been chosen, and are trusted to protect us,” she said. “But let me say to you here today: I do not feel protected.”
