A Texas mother says she feels guilty for taking her daughter out to lunch after Tuesday’s award ceremony, just seconds before Salvador Ramos slaughtered 19 students and two teachers.
‘Right now, there’s a lot of guilt.’ My heart goes out to all of the bereaved families… And now we have 11 funerals to attend,’ Mia said the New York Post, declining to give her last name.
The pupils at Robb Elementary School were expected to finish school on Thursday.
It was also supposed to be a sleepover, her daughter Evalynn was planning with her best friend, Layla Salavar, 10, a victim of the mass shooting.
‘I can’t eat, couldn’t think because of the overwhelming amount of guilt,’ said Mia.
was able to take my daughter out, but what could’ve happened if we were there just five minutes later?
One of Evalynn’s classmates described the terrifying moment the shooter burst in and how she smeared herself in her friend’s blood to fool him into believing she was shot.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, told CNN that her class was watching the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch because it was the end of the school year when her teacher got an email that there was an active shooter.
But the teacher got the notification too late and as she went to lock the door Ramos was already there and shot through the door window.
According to Cerrillo, Ramos then walked into the fourth grade classroom and looked one of the teachers, either Eva Mireles or Irma Garcia, in the eye and told her ‘goodnight’ before shooting her.
Cerrillo said after that Ramos began opening fire on the students, striking her with bullet fragments on her back and neck, before he walked towards the connected classroom and continued shooting.
After that Cerrillo said that Ramos started playing ‘sad’ music that the 11-year-old could only describe as the kind of music you play when ‘you want people to die.’
Cerrillo said that she and her friend grabbed her teachers phone to call 911 and out of fear Ramos would return to her classroom and shoot her she smeared the blood of one of her dead classmates onto her and played dead.
The 11-year-old’s family said they will be working to help Cerrillo emotionally and mentally, as well as her sister – who is a second-grader at the school – following the shooting.
‘At this point, we just have to pray and ask God to help us move forward through this situation. I know it’s traumatizing and having an 11-year-old go through this, I can’t imagine what she’s feeling,’ her aunt Blanca Rivera told Click 2 Houston.
New details about her horrifying experience come as one of Cerrillo’s classmates tells CNN he was forced to hide and remain silent as they heard gunfire coming from another classroom.
It was very terrifying because I never thought that was going to happen,’ Jayden Perez said.
The 10-year-old survivor was able to list multiple names of his friends who were killed in the shooting.
Then the young boy said he is so traumatized by Tuesday’s events he does not want to return to school, grimly saying he is sure another shooting will happen again.
‘No, because after what happened. I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with another shooting or me in the school,’ Jayden said, adding: ‘And I know it might happen again, probably.’
Ramos’ shooting rampage began at 11am when Ramos shot his grandmother.
At 11.15am, he sent a message to a girl in Germany telling her he was on his way to ‘shoot an elementary school.’ He crashed his truck at 11.30am and made his way to the school with one AR-15 rifle. At 11.32am, he bypassed at least one cop at the school entrance.
He got inside, barricaded himself in a classroom and managed to stay there for up to an hour – terrorizing kids – before he was finally gunned down.
The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest since 20 elementary-age children and six staff were killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
A Texas law enforcement official said Thursday that the Uvalde shooter entered the elementary school building ‘unobstructed’ through a door that was apparently unlocked.
Victor Escalon, a regional director at the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the gunman did not initially encounter any law enforcement officers when he entered Robb Elementary School on Tuesday and opened fire.
Law enforcement authorities faced mounting questions and criticism Thursday over how much time elapsed before they stormed a Texas elementary school classroom and put a stop to the rampage.