An 11-year-old survivor of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, feared the gunman would come back for her so she smeared herself in her friend's blood and played dead.
Miah Cerrillo spoke exclusively to CNN about her horrific experience that day inside the classroom where the mass shooting took place.
Miah said she and her classmates were watching the movie "Lilo and Stitch" in Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia's classroom when the teachers got word there was a shooter in the building, she told CNN's "New Day."
One teacher went to lock the door, but Miah says the shooter was right there — and shot out the window in the door.
She described it all happening so fast — her teacher backed into the classroom and the gunman followed. She told CNN the shooter looked at one of her teachers in the eye, said, "Goodnight," and then shot her.
He opened fire, shooting the other teacher and many of Miah's friends. She said bullets flew by her, and fragments hit her shoulders and head. The girl was later treated at the hospital and released for fragment wounds.
Miah said after shooting students in her class, the suspect went through a door into an adjoining classroom. And she heard screams, and the sound of shots in that classroom. After the shots stopped, though, she says the shooter started playing music -- sad music. She described the music as the kind where "you want people to die."
The girl and a friend managed to grab her dead teacher's phone and call 911 for help. She said she told a dispatcher, "Please send help because we're in trouble."
Miah said she was scared the gunman would return to her classroom to kill her and a few other surviving friends. So, she dipped her hands in the blood of a classmate -- who lay next to her, already dead — and then smeared the blood all over herself to play dead.
Mia said it felt like three hours that she lay there, covered in her classmate's blood, with her friends.
She told CNN she assumed at that point the police hadn't arrived on the scene yet.
She said afterwards, she overheard talk of police waiting outside the school. As she recounted this part of the story during the interview, she started crying, saying she just didn't understand why they didn't come inside and rescue them.
Miah's mother said her daughter is traumatized. The child's parents have started a GoFundMe specifically to pay for her therapy.
Miah was too scared to speak on camera, or to a man, because of what she experienced, but she wanted to share her story so people can know what it's like to live through a school shooting. She says hopefully it can help prevent a tragedy like this from happening to other children.
The-CNN-Wire
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