A young survivor of the massacre at the Texas elementary school this week said she covered herself with a friend’s blood and pretended to be dead while she waited for help to arrive, The Associated Press reported.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, was quoted as having told CNN that she and a friend called 911 from her dead teacher’s phone and waited for what felt like, to her, three hours for officers to arrive at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde following Tuesday’s shooting.
Samuel Salinas, 10, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he and other classmates pretended to be dead after the shooter, Salvador Ramos, opened fire on the class. Samuel was struck by shrapnel in his thigh.
“He shot the teacher and then he shot the kids,” said Samuel, who was in Irma Garcia’s class. Garcia died in the attack and her husband, Joe Garcia, died Thursday of an apparent heart attack.
Texas authorities said on Thursday that Ramos lingered outside the building for 12 minutes firing shots, before walking into the school and barricading in a classroom where he killed 19 children and two teachers.
Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), said, according to The Wall Street Journal, that he couldn’t say why no one stopped the gunman from entering the school.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday that the gunman revealed on Facebook just before the shooting that he was going to attack a school.
Abbott said the gunman wrote three messages on Facebook before the attack: once, about 30 minutes before the school shooting, to say he was going to shoot his grandmother, once to say he had shot his grandmother, and a third time — approximately 15 minutes before the shooting — to say he was going to open fire at an elementary school.
Facebook said the posts "were private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred," and that the company is "closely cooperating with law enforcement."
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)