- Officials said the gunman spent up to an hour at the Uvalde school before he was killed by police.
- One survivor said the gunman entered the classroom he was hiding in and said, "It's time to die."
- The fourth-grader said he hid under a table and tried to keep quiet before police killed the gunman.
A survivor of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, this week said another student was shot after following police orders to call for help.
The fourth-grade student's horrifying firsthand experience offers a grim account of what happened during the deadly shooting – a span of time that authorities themselves have offered conflicting information about. Law enforcement officials said the gunman was inside Robb Elementary School for 40 minutes to an hour before he was killed by a US border patrol agent, during which time he shot and killed 19 students and two teachers.
Authorities said the gunman barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade classroom, but many questions remained about what happened while he was at the school and the actions taken by law enforcement.
A fourth-grader who survived the shooting told local outlet KENS 5 the gunman entered the room he was in and said, "It's time to die."
"When he shot it was very loud and it hurt my ear," he said. "When I saw the bullets on the floor it was real."
The boy said he and other kids hid under a table with a tablecloth and that he told his friend to be quiet so the gunman wouldn't find them.
"When the cops came, the cop said: 'Yell if you need help!' And one of the persons in my class said 'help.' The guy overheard and he came in and shot her," the boy told KENS 5. "The cops barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cops. And the cops started shooting."
He said after the shooting stopped he saw police were in the room and came out from under the table.
The boy also told the outlet the two teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, protected the kids in the room: "They went in front of my classmates to help. To save them."
The Uvalde police chief said during a press conference Thursday that officers responded to the shooting "within minutes," but did not address allegations from parents that police officers did not initially enter the school to confront the shooter.
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