Girl (11) survives the Uvalde massacre: she smeared herself with blood and pretended to be dead
Created: 05/29/2022, 06:26
By: Julia Volkenand
A shooting spree in Uvalde, Texas killed 21 people.
An 11-year-old reported surviving by playing dead.
Uvalde - For the first time, one of the surviving children of the primary school shooting in Uvalde speaks out in detail.
An 11-year-old told CNN that she smeared herself with the blood of a dead classmate and pretended to be dead during the attack.
That's how she escaped the gunman.
She then used her dead teacher's cell phone with a classmate to call the police.
She doesn't know why it didn't come.
Shooting spree in Texas: Eleven-year-old tells of terrible moments
She and her classmates were watching the cartoon "Lilo and Stitch" on Tuesday when the two teachers learned there was a shooter at school, the girl told a CNN reporter in unfilmed testimony.
The eleven-year-old says she has been afraid of men since the cruel 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, she told the CNN reporter.
A police officer lays flowers in front of Robb Elementary School in the city of Uvalde, Texas, United States.
19 children and two adults were killed Tuesday in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, Texas.
© dpa/Wu Xiaoling
One of the teachers tried to close the classroom door, but the shooter was already there, the girl reported.
Everything went very quickly.
According to the child, the perpetrator looked at the teacher and said "good night".
Then he shot her and aimed at her colleague and some students.
The girl was injured in the shoulder and head by shrapnel.
Shooting spree in Uvalde: Eleven-year-old Tat survived by acting quickly
After that, the student continued, the shooter opened a door to the neighboring classroom.
She heard shots and screams.
The shooter turned on music through speakers - "sad music," as she says.
When asked what exactly she meant by that, the eleven-year-old said: Music like "I want people to die."
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.
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 hadn't arrived at the scene.
Later she learned from adults that the police were already there.
"Why didn't they come in, why didn't they save us?" she asked the CNN reporter, crying.
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Texas: Girl severely traumatized by killing spree
In the attack on an elementary school in the small Texas town of Uvalde, an 18-year-old shot two teachers and 19 children.
The husband of one of the teachers also died afterwards.
The police have now admitted to mistakes.
Texas Public Safety Commissioner Steven McCraw said in Uvalde it was the "wrong decision" not to earlier storm the classroom where the gunman was holed up with children.
The kid's hair has been falling out since that awful day at school.
Her mother set up a donation website to fund the medical and psychological help her daughter needed after the massacre.
"She will need a lot of help to cope with the trauma she is going through," the mother wrote.
As of Saturday morning, more than $340,000 had already been raised.
This far exceeded the original goal of $10,000.
(afp/jv)