A Child's Profile in Courage

"We were just watching a movie and then she [my teacher] got an email ... she went to lock the door and he [the gunman] was in the hallway, and they made eye contact ... she went back in the room and told us go hide." 

"He shot my teacher, and told my teacher 'good night' and shot her in the head. Then, he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard."

"When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend that was next to me. I thought he was going to come back to the room so I grabbed her blood and put it all over me, and just stayed quiet. Then I got my teacher's phone and called 911."

"I told her [the dispatcher]  that we needed help and to send the police in our classroom."

Miah Cerrillo, 11, child survivor of the Uvalde school mass shooting

Miah Cerrillo, 11-year-old Uvalde shooting survivor tells Committee what she experienced: AP

"[She's not the same little girl that I used to play with, hang around with, and do everything."

"She was Daddy's little girl ... I wish something would change, not only for our kids but every little kid ... because schools are not safe anymore."

Miguel Cerrillo, Miah's father

The U.S. Justice Department, obviously under pressure from a disturbed, outraged public has announced a team they have appointed comprised of nine people to assist in a review of the response to the Uvalde school shooting by law enforcement. The team will include an official from the FBI and former police chiefs. The Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services is leading the critical incident review. 

 

A review that will grapple with the fact that members of the community judged to qualify as professional police in upholding safety and security and the social order within the community spectacularly failed. Messages that frightened, desperate children dialled 911 to bring to their attention were evidently never received. And the question is: had they been received might the outcome have been any different? In a gross failure of courage and judgement the police opted to wait an hour before intervening.

"I am asking every member of this committee [House Oversight Committee] to listen with an open heart to the brave witnesses who have come forward to tell their stories about how gun violence has impacted their lives."

"Our witnesses today have endured pain and loss. Yet they are displaying incredible courage by coming here to ask us to do our jobs."

Representative Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman, House panel

Hearing the witness testimony of a child, her father, bereaved parents of children who were deliberately shot to death by a young warped-mind American terrorist, some of the lawmakers present wept, just as those who were bearing witness, recalling their dreadful experience and even more dread losses, themselves wept with the agony of loss and frustration.

The politicians present were shown a chart registering the indisputable fact that firearm deaths that take place in the United States have no similar counterparts in any other country of the developed world. The underlying purpose of the Committee was to lay the groundwork for lawmakers to strike a bipartison agreement on measures addressing gun safety in an atmosphere of horror at the country's back-to-back mass shootings.

Those present listened intently and no doubt winced with pain as pediatrician Dr.Roy Guerrero who had tended several of the child victims, described what he saw: "Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart." The very vivid visualization in the description difficult to comprehend. "I'll never forget what I saw that day, (children whose bodies had been so brutalized by gun violence) that the only clue to their identities was blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them."

They listened as Kimberly Rubio, mother of Lexi Rubio, a classmate of Miah's who died in the assault alongside 18 of her classmates and two of her teachers, said she would be "haunted" for the remainder of her life and went on to ask why it is that some people feel "guns are more important than children". "Today, we stand for Lexi, and, as her voice, we demand action", she said, concluding her testimony.

Even as the legislators listened respectfully and quietly to the impassioned pleas of the witnesses, one after another, there can be little doubt that in turn the witnesses quietly and with huge frustration, listened to the legislators in their turn, who spoke of individuals who abuse guns and that "hardening schools" could help protect students.

"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."

"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."

Zeneta Everhart, mother of Zaire Goodman