(Reuters) – An 11-year-old survivor of last month’s mass shooting at a Texas elementary school told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday how she desperately acted to save her own life after the gunman shot a friend next to her, saying, “I got the blood and put it all over me.”
Miah Cerrillo, 11, and the parents of multiple young Americans killed and wounded in a spate of recent mass shootings testified on Wednesday before a congressional panel as a bipartisan group of senators worked to see if there was any compromise on gun safety that Democrats and Republicans can agree to.”He told my teacher ‘good night’ and shot her in the head,” Cerrillo said in a pre-taped interview played for the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee.
“And then he shot some of my classmates and the white board,” she said, adding: “He shot my friend that was next to me … and I thought he was going to come back to the room. I got the blood and put it all on me.”
The young girl said she fears such violence could happen again at school.Cerrillo spoke about two weeks after the shooting by an 18-year-old at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 of her classmates and two teachers.
A spate of mass shootings across the United States in recent weeks has killed dozens and sparked the latest round of bipartisan talks in the U.S. Senate.
Her testimony came as the United States has suffered more than 200 mass murders just this year.While the House since last year has been passing a series of sweeping gun-related reforms that likely would be blocked by Senate Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Reuters she had “trust” in the Senate negotiators and noted the urgency for Congress to act.
With Democrats and Republicans deeply divided on guns, the Senate talks have focused on modest goals including encouraging states to pass “red flag” laws to deny firearms to people judged a risk to themselves or the public and federal funding to improve school security.
A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday were haggling over the likely costs of beefing up treatment of mental illnesses that could contribute to gun violence and for funding states’ red flag programs, according to senators.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said that while “we’re close on a number of these issues,” negotiators still have plenty of details to iron out.
During the House hearing, Republicans on the panel vowed to defend the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Many of them have objected to proposals such as limiting sales of the assault-style rifles used in the Uvalde massacre and another mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store that killed 10 Black victims.
