A fourth-grade boy who survived Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, says he witnessed the gunman’s cold-blooded attack on children as he hid underneath a table waiting for help to arrive.
The boy, who has not been named, told local news outlet KENS 5 that the shooter, identified by authorities as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, said “It’s time to die” after barricading himself inside the classroom. While police have not yet determined the motive for the rampage that killed 19 children and two teachers, the boy’s account provides some of the first details on how things unfolded in the barricaded classroom as the gunman picked off elementary-school students with an assault rifle.
“When I heard the shooting through the door, I told my friend to hide under something so he won’t find us. I was hiding hard. And I was telling my friend to not talk because he is going to hear us,” the boy said.
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The boy, along with four other children he was hiding with, was likely spared because a tablecloth kept them out of view from the shooter.
But he said one person in the classroom was targeted after responding to a police officer who had arrived at the scene.
“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘Help!’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy told KENS 5.
It was not immediately clear if she was among those killed, or if she was one of the 17 injured.
Two teachers were gunned down as they tried to shield the students. Of Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, the boy said, “They were nice teachers. They went in front of my classmates to help. To save them.”
“I would like to say to every kid and parent to be safe,” he said.
The students are thought to have been trapped with the gunman in the classroom for about an hour before authorities were able to gain access, with witnesses saying some police officers hung around outside the school instead of entering. Questions have also arisen over safety protocols, as tactical officers who first arrived were unable to breach the classroom’s steel door and had to wait to get a master key from the principal.
Some parents who had rushed to the school after the first alert went out about an “active shooter” on campus took matters into their own hands, breaking windows and trying to pull children to safety.
Miguel Cerrillo, the father of an 11-year-old girl who survived the attack, told The Washington Post he’d watched as a police officer carried her out covered in blood.
“I panicked,” he said, recalling how his daughter, Miah, told him what she’d seen.
He said she watched as the gunman killed her teacher, Eva Mireles, who’d been clutching a phone when she was struck. Miah took the phone and called 911, and then played dead in a desperate bid to prevent herself from becoming a target.
But she had to lie on top of a classmate who’d been shot, Cerrillo said, and she remained there even as the other girl, a friend, eventually stopped breathing.
Miah, whose entire left side was torn up by small bullet fragments, was discharged late Tuesday but spent the whole night terrified, he said, urging him to get his gun because “He’s going to come get us.”
