WASHINGTON — Miah Cerrillo gave lawmakers a horrifying firsthand account of the school massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde as she described covering herself in her friend’s blood to play dead while the shooter gunned down her classmates.
The fourth grader testified Wednesday via a pre-recorded video in which she answered questions about her experience that day. She recounted how her teacher made eye contact with the gunman through a small window in the door before he shot out the window and entered the adjoining classrooms.
“There’s a door between our classrooms and he went through there and shot my teacher and told my teacher ‘good night’ and shot her in the head,” Miah said. “And then he shot some of my classmates ... he shot my friend that was next to me and I thought he was going to come back to the room so I grabbed the blood and put it all over me.”
In the video she wore a shirt with sunflowers and the words “Live by the sun.”
After covering herself in the blood, she said, she stayed quiet other than grabbing her teacher’s phone and calling 911.
In response to a question about what she wants now, she said “to have security.”
Asked whether she feels safe at school, she shook her head.
Why not?
“I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.
Do you think it’s going to happen again?
She nodded.
Her father, Miguel Cerrillo, then spoke briefly in person in the hearing room. He fought back tears as he said his daughter isn’t the same little girl that he used to play with.
“She’s everything, not only for me but her siblings and her mother,” Cerrillo said. “I thank y’all for letting me be here and speak out but I wish something will change not only for our kids but every single kid in the world because schools are not safe anymore. Something needs to really change.”
Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, was among the 19 fourth graders killed, appeared by video feed. Lexi had received an all-A honor roll certificate and a good citizen award that day.
Kimberly Rubio recounted how they went to the school for the award ceremony and promised Lexi they would celebrate that night with ice cream.
“I can still see her walking with us toward the exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories she turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise,” Rubio said. “And then we left. I left my daughter at that school and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
She said they don’t want people to think of Lexi as just a number describing her as intelligent, compassionate and athletic.
”She was quiet, shy unless she had a point to make. She knew she was right. She so often was. She stood her ground,” Rubio said. “She was firm, direct, voice unwavering. So today we stand for Lexi and as her voice we demand action.”
She called for changes to the country’s gun laws, including a ban on assault rifles and high capacity magazines.
The committee also heard from Dr. Roy Guerrero, the only pediatrician in Uvalde, who witnessed the horrible wounds suffered by the victims, some of whom were his patients.
He told the committee how he rushed to the hospital and the first patient he encountered was “sweet Miah,” how her whole body was shaking from the adrenaline. Her white Lilo and Stitch shirt was covered in blood and her shoulder was bleeding from a shrapnel injury.
Searching for Miah’s sister at the hospital he went to see where there were two dead children. He said he found “two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart, that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Guerrero said that as a pediatrician he can protect kids from disease.
“But making sure our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of our politicians and leaders. In this case, you are the doctors and our country is a patient. We are lying on the operating table riddled with bullets like the children of Rob Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out and you are not there.”
Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat from California who sits on the committee, exited the hearing in tears.
“My daughter is in fourth grade,” Porter told reporters, clutching a tissue.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who doesn’t sit on the committee but was outside the hearing room, said the House will be pushing through gun control legislation over the next few days.
“Today, these victims have lost,” Jackson Lee said of the witnesses testifying inside. “I am begging. I join my colleagues in the Senate. I will be begging that these bills are passed and that the carnage stops, the pain stops, the victimization stops.”
The hearing comes as lawmakers wrangle over the best response to the ongoing epidemic of gun violence. House Democrats are poised to pass a series of gun control measures, while a bipartisan group of senators is discussing more modest gun measures on the other side of the Capitol.
The committee announced on Wednesday the decision to have Miah testify by video.
“The committee has been in close contact with Miah, her family, and her pediatrician and has been prioritizing her safety and comfort first and foremost,” Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney said in a statement. “Her decision to record her story and share it with the American people is courageous — and I hope all Members open their hearts and minds to what she has to say.”
The hearing is the second of two this week as families of the victims and survivors of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde appear at public hearings and events on Capitol Hill to show the human toll of America’s gun violence and urge Congress to act.
Pressing for a deal, President Joe Biden met Tuesday with Sen. Chris Murphy, a key Democratic negotiator, who has worked most of his career trying to curb the nation’s mass-shooting scourge after the heartbreaking slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary in his home state of Connecticut a decade ago.
Murphy said his goal is to try to get an agreement this week, but he added that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been clear that “we need some extra time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s that will get it.”
Also Tuesday, actor Matthew McConaughey, who is from Uvalde, made the rounds of Senate offices before heading to the White House to open the daily briefing. McConaughey, who earlier this year considered a run for governor of Texas, gave a speech on the importance of taking legislative action “to make the loss of these lives matter.”
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(Washington correspondents Rebekah Alvey and Emily Caldwell contributed to this report.)
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