Robb Elementary student reveals gunman’s chilling words to teacher before shooting her

A Robb Elementary student has described the gunman’s chilling comment before he shot her teacher, and how she survived the horrific massacre.

An 11-year-old girl has told how she smeared herself in her murdered friend’s blood to play dead during the recent school shooting in Texas, one of a spate of mass shootings which have torn across America recently.

On Wednesday, Miah Cerrillo, a year four student at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, spoke in a prerecorded interview played for a House of Representatives committee. In it, she described the moments when 19 of her fellow students and two teachers were killed by a gunman last month.

She said her class had been watching a movie when the 18-year-old gunman entered. They then scrambled behind their teacher’s desk and their backpacks.

“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 the gut-wrenching interview.

Miah Cerrillo testifies to the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday. Picture: Jason Andrew/AFP

Miah’s dad, Miguel Cerrillo. Picture: Andrew Harnik/AFP

“When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend who was next to me and I thought he was going to come back into the room so I grabbed a little blood and put it all over me.”

Miah recalled how she kept completely silent, before grabbing her dead teacher’s mobile phone when the moment came and dialling 911.

“I told her that we need help – and [we need] to see the police in our classroom,” she said.

Police in Uvalde have come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited outside the door of Miah’s class and did nothing as the children lay dead or dying.

Miah was asked what she wanted to see happen in the wake of the attack.

“To have security,” she said, confirming that she feared a mass shooter could target her school again.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.

Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio’s daughter Lexi, 10, was killed in the shooting. Picture: Andrew Harnik/AFP

‘Ripped apart’ by gunfire

Miah – whose account of the shootings left some politicians in tears or wide-eyed in disbelief – is having nightmares and still healing from bullet fragments in her back, according to her father Miguel Cerrillo.

“She’s not the same little girl I used to play with,” he told the committee. Her testimony came with Congress facing mounting pressure to respond to spiralling gun violence – and particularly mass shootings – across the country.

Massacres at Miah’s school and days earlier at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York have shocked the nation, reigniting urgent calls for gun safety reforms.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee also heard from the mother of Lexi Rubio, a Robb Elementary year four student who was killed.

Garnell Whitfield Jr, son of Ruth Whitfield who died in the mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, arrives at the hearing on gun violence. Picture: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP

“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic,” Kimberly Rubio said via a video link, wiping away tears as she sat next to her husband Felix.

“She was quiet, shy, unless she had a point to make. When she was right, as she often was, she stood her ground. She was firm, direct, voice unwavering. So today we stand for Lexi and as her voice, we demand action.”

Roy Guerrero, a paediatrician who attended to several victims in Uvalde, spoke of encountering “two children whose bodies had been pulverised by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart”.

‘Elected to protect us’

A cross-party group of senators is working on a narrow collection of controls that could develop into their first serious attempt at gun regulation reform in decades.

The package would boost funding for mental health services and school security, narrowly expand background checks, and incentivise states to institute so-called “red flag laws” that enable authorities to confiscate weapons from individuals considered a threat.

But it does not include an assault weapons ban or universal background checks, meaning it will fall short of the expectations of US President Joe Biden, progressive Democrats, and anti-gun violence activists.

Uvalde paediatrician Roy Guerrero recalls the horrific damage the bullets did to the Robb Elementary victims. Picture: Stefani Reynolds/AFP

And even this compromise deal has to run the gauntlet of an evenly divided Senate and earn the votes of at least 10 Republicans, despite most being against significant regulatory reform.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Democrats were set to pass a much broader package of proposals that include raising the purchasing age for semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21.

But those proposals are going nowhere – they do not have the 60 votes they would need to advance in the Senate. However Democratic leadership has been keen to act after the spate of recent mass shootings.

Garnell Whitfield Jr, the son of Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield, who was 86, testified on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on white supremacist violence.

“You expect us to continue to forgive and forget over and over again? And what are you doing? You were elected to protect us and protect our way of life,” the retired fire commissioner said in an emotional appeal to senators.