• An 11-year-old girl survived the Uvalde school shooting by covering herself in her friend's blood and playing dead. 
  • Miah Cerrillo described the massacre to CNN's Nora Neus, saying it happened "all so fast." 
  • She described the moments the shooter entered her classroom and killed her teachers. 

An 11-year-old student at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, survived the mass shooting at her school Tuesday by covering herself in her friend's blood and playing dead. 

Miah Cerrillo told CNN's Nora Neus that her class had been watching "Lilo and Stitch" when one of her teachers got an email that there was a shooter in the building. By the time her teacher walked over to the classroom door, the shooter was already there.

She said he made eye contact with her teacher, then shot through the window in the door.

Cerrillo said what came next happened "all so fast." 

She said the shooter backed her teacher into their classroom, looked her in the eye, said "goodnight," and then shot her. 

She recalled that he then started "open-firing" in the classroom, hitting her other teacher and many of her classmates. Cerrillo was hit by fragments of bullets and has wounds on her arms and head, Neus reported. 

The shooter then went to the adjoining classroom, Cerrillo said. She said she heard more screams and a lot more gunfire.

At this point, she said the shooter started "blasting sad music" in the adjoining classroom.

A friend of Cerrillo's, who Cerrillo said she was pretty sure was already dead, was bleeding out near her. She said she put her hands in her friend's blood and smeared it all over her body to make it look like she was already dead, fearful the gunman was going to return and target her. 

Miguel Cerrillo told the Washington Post that his daughter grabbed the cellphone from the hands of one of her slain teachers and dialed 911. 

After Cerrillo was discharged from the hospital Tuesday night, Miguel Cerrillo said his daughter told him to get his gun because "he's going to come get us," referring to the gunman who attacked her classroom earlier that day. 

The shooter — who was killed by police after the massacre — killed 19 students and two teachers, and injured an additional 17 people.

Law enforcement officials are facing backlash for the hour it took for a team to be assembled to confront the suspect after he barricaded himself in a classroom.

Police officials have also offered conflicting stories of what happened, with the exact timeline still unclear and an initial claim by state law enforcement that a police officer confronted the gunman was later debunked.

Experts, speaking to Insider, have said that "every second counts" in an active shooter situation and police officers are trained to work quickly to engage and neutralize an active shooter. 

 

Read the original article on Insider