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Flowers, candles and messages in front of the crime scene in Uvalde, a primary school
Photo: MARCO BELLO / REUTERS
19 of her classmates and two teachers were shot dead - after the school massacre in Uvalde, an eleven-year-old girl reported extensively to CNN about the attack.
The 11-year-old said she smeared herself with the blood of a dead classmate and played dead to escape the gunman.
She and a classmate used her killed teacher's cell phone and called the police - she said she didn't understand why they hadn't come.
An 18-year-old shot and killed 21 people in the attack on an elementary school in the small Texas town of Uvalde on Tuesday.
The attacker was killed by the police, but there is now criticism of the operation.
The 11-year-old and her classmates were watching the cartoon Lilo and Stitch on Tuesday when teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia learned there was a shooter at school, Cerrillo told a CNN reporter.
"Good night," then he shot the teacher
The eleven-year-old says she has been "afraid of men" since the attack and therefore only wanted to talk to one woman, along with her mother.
She also didn't want to be filmed.
But the whole world should know what exactly happened, the girl told the CNN reporter.
One of the teachers tried to close the classroom door, but the shooter was already there, the girl reported.
Then he shot the teacher and aimed at her colleague and some students.
The 11-year-old was injured in the shoulder and head by shrapnel.
After that, the student continued, the shooter opened a door to the neighboring classroom.
She heard shots and screams.
Fearing that the shooter would return to her class, she says she dipped her hands in the blood of a classmate whose body was lying next to her, smeared it on herself and pretended to be dead.
"Why didn't you save us?"
Using the dead teacher's phone, the girl and a friend managed to call the police: "Please come, please come," they pleaded when they called, the eleven-year-old reported.
At that point, she assumed the police weren't at the school yet.
Later she learned from adults that the police had already been there.
"Why didn't they come in, why didn't they save us?" she asked the CNN reporter.
The police have now admitted to mistakes.
Texas Public Safety Superintendent Steven McCraw said in Uvalde it was the "wrong decision" not to earlier storm the classroom where the shooter was holed up with children.
sep/dpa/AFP
