Survivors of the Texas elementary school shooting are recounting the gunman’s eerie final words of “Good night” and “You’re all gonna die” before opening fire, and how some played dead to be spared in the spray of bullets.
Samuel Salinas, 10, was a student in teacher Irma Garcia’s class on Tuesday when the school shooting unfolded.
“It was a normal day until my teacher said we’re on severe lockdown” and “then there was shooting in the windows,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Friday.
He said that the gunman barged into the classroom, announced, “You’re all gonna die,” and then started to shoot.
“He shot the teacher and then he shot the kids,” Samuel said.
He explained that he survived by playing dead after he got hit in the leg with shrapnel that hit a chair between him and the shooter.
“I think he was aiming at me,” Samuel said. “I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me.”
When police finally entered the room and shot the gunman, the kids were evacuated. In the rushed exit, Samuel saw the bodies of his teacher and other pupils.
“There was blood on the ground,” he said. “And there were kids … full of blood.”
Fourth grade student Miah Cerrillo, 11, told CNN her class was watching “Lilo and Stitch” when the shooter appeared Tuesday at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.
She said the gunman looked at one of her teachers in the eye and said, “Good night” before shooting her.
Miah told her story through a CNN producer. She did not want to speak on camera and declined to speak to any men following her experience with the school shooting and only felt comfortable speaking to women, the broadcaster said. NBC News could not immediately verify the account.
Miah herself was hit by fragments in the hail of bullets, CNN reported.
After firing shots in her classroom, the shooter went into the adjoining classroom and opened fire, Miah said. She said she heard “sad music” playing, believing the gunman put it on.
When asked what the music was, she said it sounded like, “I want people to die music.”
Miah said that when the gunman went into the other room she smeared a friend’s blood on herself to look dead. She also said she and a friend grabbed their teacher’s phone and called 911, telling a dispatcher, “Please send help because we’re in trouble.”
In the Tuesday horror, 19 children and two teachers were killed, and another 17 were wounded.
A Robb Elementary teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NBC News that a Raptor alert, a program designed to alert staff of a lockdown, went off after shots were fired and children started to hide under their desks in the class.
