‘I don’t want it to happen again’: 11-year-old survivor of Texas massacre

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, Texas (AA) - A fourth-grader who survived the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting last month testified before a US House of Representatives gun violence panel Wednesday.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” said Miah Cerrillo, 11, who smeared a classmate’s blood on her face and hands and played dead during the Robb Elementary School massacre.

The 18-year-old shooter killed 19 students and two teachers.

"He shot my friend that was next to me, and I thought he was going to come back to the room, so I grabbed a little blood and put it all over me,” Cerrillo recalled during a pre-recorded video played before the committee.

“I got my teacher's phone and called 911,” she said. “I told her that we need help, and to send the police in our classroom.”

Cerrillo said she does not feel safe at school and wants “to have security,” a sentiment also expressed by Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician who treated the victims of the Uvalde shooting.

“Two children, whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart,” Guerrero explained in gruesome detail. “That the only clue as to their identities were the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them, clinging for life and finding none.”

Survivors of the Buffalo, New York mass shooting on May 14, in which an 18-year-old murdered 10 people at a supermarket, also testified.

"To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need stricter gun laws, let me paint a picture for you,” said Zeneta Everhart, whose son survived the Buffalo massacre. “My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg, caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15,” she said. “As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of his life. Now, I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children. This should not be your story – or mine."

“Making sure our children are safe from guns, that's the job of our politicians and leaders,” Guerrero emphasized. “In this case, you are the doctors and our country is the patient.”

“My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives,” he said. “I do my job … I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours.”