A shooting survivor is moved on the 'American Idol' contest. "Our country has failed us" says crying Katy Perry

By Mirna Alsharif —

A survivor of a Texas school shooting brought judges on the

television show to tears at an audition broadcast on Sunday.

Trey Louis, nicknamed

, is a 21-year-old salesman from Santa Fe, Texas who sang a heartfelt rendition of

Whiskey Myers'

His performance was received with a standing ovation from the judges, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

“You have the perfect voice,” Bryan told Louis.

But it wasn't Louis' performance that moved the judges the most.

“In May 2018, a gunman entered my school,” he told the judges when asked why he was entering the contest.

“I was in art room 1, he shot up art room 2 before making his way into room 1. I lost a lot of friends.

Eight students were killed, two teachers were killed, it's been really negative, Santa Fe has had a bad reputation since 2018," Louis explained.

That May 18, 2018, a 17-year-old student dressed in a trench coat, burst into a classroom at a Santa Fe high school, in southeast Texas, armed with a shotgun and a revolver and opened fire, killing everyone. of 10 people and injuring 13.

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Richie blew out a breath and seemed to wipe away tears.

And Perry burst into tears covering himself with her hands.

“Our country has failed us,” the singer yelled, using expletives, “it's not right, you should be singing here because you love the music, not because you had to go through it... You didn't have to lose eight friends.

I hope you remind people that we have to change."

“We have tolerated this for so long, too long, that it has become the norm,” Richie said.

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Louis received a "yes" from the three judges, who hugged him before pronouncing the long-awaited words: "You're going to Hollywood."

Like Louis, thousands of students have seen their lives forever changed by gun violence in schools.

This month, three students were killed and five others injured at Michigan State University when a gunman opened fire at two locations on campus before leading police on a chase that ended when he fatally shot himself.

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So far this year, there have been 94 mass shootings in the country, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks the spread of what has been called an American disease and defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which at least four people—not counting the killer—are shot.