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

Whatever Could Go Wrong, Did

"Of course it was not the right decision, it was the wrong decision, period. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, it was not the right decision."

"[The incident commander on-site Tuesday, who was a member of the school district's own police force, had determined that by the time three Uvalde police officers entered the school at 11:35 a.m., the situation was no longer an active shooting but a barricaded shooter scenario and] no more children were at risk."

"Obviously, based upon the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were at risk, and it was, in fact, still an active shooter situation."

Col. Steven McCraw, director, Texas Department of Public Safety

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, arrives at a news conference in front of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Friday. McCraw admitted that police made the wrong decision in not confronting the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at the school sooner. ( Omar Ornelas/USA Today Network/Reuters)

A worse scenario cannot be imagined, that while children were desperately trying to hide from an armed marauder out to murder as many vulnerable young children as he could for a reason only a twisted mind could comprehend, police waited an interminable length of time even while trapped children were trustingly calling 911 begging to be rescued from their nightmare. For an hour they huddled together in terror that the man with the semi-automatic rifle would notice them, sending out messages that were futile, while police officers waited, against all operational instructions in coping with situations like this.

Now the crisis is over, there will be 19 funerals for children aged 9 and 10 who the killer did see when he barricaded himself along with his victims in a grade four classroom at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and another two funerals where the city will grieve for the deaths of two of the teachers whose job it was to teach those children. No fewer than 19 officers waited in a hallway, while an hour elapsed and the rampage continued.

Contrary to initial reports following the deadly attack in the elementary school, no armed school officer was in attendance that day and there was no one to challenge the intention of a black-clad man wielding a semi-automatic weapon from entering the school. Entry, in fact, took place, against all entrenched security protocols of the school board, through an unlocked door at the school, a door furthermore, that had been propped open by someone at the school.

When police did arrive at the school in response to emergency calls when Salvador Ramos, 18 had gained entrance, they retreated immediately they came under fire. On the arrival of specially emergency- equipped federal agents they were refused entrance to the school, by local police. 

During which time two children in hiding, hoping not to be noticed by the gunman, called 911 repeatedly with one of the children informing police of their situation, whispering that there were others dead and "eight to nine" students still alive. How utterly horrifying this must have been for those children; young as they were to be in that deadly situation, knowing their lives hung in the balance of luck, the evidence all around them that luck failed some of their classmates.

Police officers help children run to safety after escaping from a window at the school. (Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News/Reuters)

After the passage of an impossibly-endless hour when time must have seemed to stand still, a tactical unit led by border agents entered a classroom where the gunman was killed. Videos shot minutes following the shooter entering the building show police holding back frantic parents, and handcuffing some. Over 100 rounds were fired by Ramos by the time seven police officers entered the school at about 11:40 a.m. 

The 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado led to guidelines widely implemented directing officers to pursue shooters without waiting for special backup. "The first two to five responding officers should form a single team and enter the structure", orders the Texas Police Chiefs Association's own policy manual. One schoolchild spoke of Ramos having "backed the teacher into the classroom --- looked her right in the eye, and said 'Goodnight', and then shot her and killed her".

Some children had great presence of mind to try to save themselves as did 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo who rubbed a classmate's blood over herself in pretense of death, in case the gunman returned to her classroom. Parents at the rear of the school building are seen in a video complaining that police were doing nothing. Angeli Rose-Gomez, whose children were in the school, was handcuffed by federal marshals when she and others pushed police to intervene.