A fourth-grade teacher who was shot during the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has recounted how children called out for police to help them before they died.
Arnulfo Reyes, who has been a teacher for 17 years, said he was shot twice during the second-most deadly school shooting in US history – 19 children and two teachers were killed.
Speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America, he recalled that he was watching a movie with 11 of his students when he heard the sound of gunshots.
“It was going to be a good day,” Mr Reyes told ABC News. “There was nothing unusual that day, we were just walking back to the classroom … to watch the rest of the movie.”
While recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Mr Reyes spoke of several interactions with gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, on 24 May during the shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Mr Reyes and his student were in classroom 111, which was connected to one of the rooms where Ramos began shooting.
“The kids were yelling, ‘What’s going on, Mr Reyes?’” he said.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but let’s go ahead and get under the table,” the teacher responded. “Get under the table and act like you’re asleep.”
Mr Reyes said he heard officers outside the classroom as a child in the other room asked for help, adding that he believes the officer had walked away without hearing the calls for aid.
“One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying, ‘Officer, we’re in here. We’re in here,’” Mr Reyes said. “But they had already left.”
The students “were going under the table, and I was trying to get them to do that as fast as I could”.
“When I turned around, I just saw him,” he added.
The gunman began firing into the classroom. Mr Reyes said he was struck by two bullets – one went through his arm and lung and the other struck him in the back.
He said the shooting, which lasted for over an hour and 15 minutes, “destroyed” him and permanently altered the school and the surrounding community.
“I feel so bad for the parents because they lost a child,” Mr Reyes told ABC. “But they lost one child. I lost 11 that day, all at one time.”
The teacher called the police “cowards” for not acting more quickly.
“The only thing that I know is that I won’t let these children and my co-workers die in vain,” he said. “I will go to the end of the world to make sure things get changed. If that’s what I have to do for the rest of my life, I will do it.”
Mr Reyes hit the floor after being shot as the gunman started firing into the room of students aged 10 and 11 years old. The classroom grew quiet.
“I prayed that I wouldn’t hear none of my students talk,” he said. “And I didn’t hear talk for a while. But then, later on, he did shoot again. So, if he didn’t get them the first time, he got them the second time.”
Mr Reyes said he pretended to be unconscious, but then Ramos fired again.
“And that was the second time he got me,” the teacher said. “Just to make sure that I was dead.”
“I had no concept of time,” he added. “When things go bad, it seems like [an] eternity. The only thing that I can say is I felt like my blood was like an hourglass.”
Mr Reyes told ABC that he has had five surgeries in the two weeks since the shooting and has had his blood replaced twice.
After initially hearing gunshots at around 11.30am, a tactical unit breached the school and killed the shooter at 12.50pm.
“After that, it was just bullets everywhere,” Mr Reyes said. “And then I just remember Border Patrol saying, ‘Get up, get out,’ and I couldn’t get up.”
The teacher went on to strongly criticize the police for not taking faster action.
“They’re cowards,” Mr Reyes said. “They sit there and did nothing for our community. They took a long time to go in … I will never forgive them.”
The teacher described procedural failures that he says likely led to more deaths.
“There was no announcement. I did not receive any messages on my phone ... I didn’t get anything, and I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
Mr Reyes said he had made complaints about his door, which was supposed to be closed and locked during class. He said he had told the school principal that his door wouldn’t latch.
“When that would happen, I would tell my principal, ‘Hey, I’m going to get in trouble again, they’re going to come and tell you that I left my door unlocked, which I didn’t,’” he said. “But the latch was stuck. So, it was just an easy fix.”
But he added that “no training would ever prepare anybody for this”.
“It all happened too fast. Training, no training, all kinds of training – nothing gets you ready for this,” he told ABC. “We trained our kids to sit under the table and that’s what I thought of at the time. But we set them up to be like ducks.”
Mr Reyes urged lawmakers to enact gun reform.
“If you want to buy a gun, you want to own a gun, that’s fine,” he said. “But the age limit has to change. And I think that they need to do more background checks on it. Things just have to change. It must change.”
