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CNN
—
Fourth-grader Mia Cerillo was on the phone with a 911 operator after being shot by a gunman at Robb Elementary School.
“He’s shooting,” she says at 12:21 p.m
“Be quiet, make sure everyone is quiet,” the operator told her.
It would take another 29 minutes before officers challenged and killed the shooter.
By then, armed suspects were lined up outside classrooms 111 and 112, where they waited, talked, checked equipment and looked for tools, until a group finally entered the rooms and killed the gunman.
Throughout the call, Mia and her classmate Chloe Torres — who both survive — call for officers to be sent to save them from the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
Little did they know that a total of 376 officers from 23 local, state and federal agencies were responding, many just feet away from them, their injured friends and teachers. A child and a teacher survived the initial attack but later died.
Now, Mia’s parents, Abigale Veloz and Miguel Cerrillo, want all those officers to hear the calls of their daughter, who was wounded by shrapnel in her shoulder and head.
“If kids are calling and saying they’re hurt or they’re in the classroom, that shows they’re really cowards,” Cerrillo said of the officers who responded.
“All the officers that were there should listen to this audio so they can understand what the kids are going through, these suckers are out there.”
The chaotic and protracted May 24 response has been criticized for months as a failure. But the full details of what happened and when are still being withheld, and Texas’ top police official did not provide an update as expected at a public meeting last week. Instead, Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, listened to family members’ anger and admitted some wrongdoing, before saying his officials had not “failed the community” of Uvalde.
We Mia’s parents reached out to CNN after her classmate Chloe called 911 on Tuesday and reported the dead and injured in Classroom 112, and officers burst into the room to eventually stop the gunman and pull out the victims.
Chloe’s father, Ruben Torres, praised his daughter’s actions and again compared them to the officers’ inaction after hearing the 911 call. “Back then, what she did was absolutely incredible,” he said of his daughter. Of the adults who responded, he said: “None of them had the guts that day.”
Uvalde Butcher describes the 10-year-old’s release of quotes to the dispatcher
CNN obtained the 18-minute audio of the 911 call from a source and is using it with the permission of Khloe and Mia’s parents. That should have put an end to any doubt or hesitation that the teenage gunman was active, roaming between the two connected classrooms, and that the children were trapped, injured, and needing to be rescued.
Mia’s parents heard the call for the first time on Wednesday, and they said it helped them understand more about what Mia told them and what she went through.
They could hear her trying to help teacher Eva Mireles, who had been shot and later died, and gave their room number to Chloe, who was very new to Uvalde and the school. As Chloe relays the operator’s order for everyone to shut up, Mia tries to hold back her panicked and injured fourth grade classmates.
They hear her coming down the line with clear, polite requests from Chloe.
“Hi, can you please send help?” Mia asks at 12:19, 46 minutes after seeing the shooter enter the room, but more than 30 minutes since being stopped.
“Are they in the building?” She repeatedly asks about law enforcement’s response. Mia believed the officers were still trying to find a way to get close to them, her mother said, never realizing they were stacked on the other side of the door, just feet away.
Her family tried to protect her from learning more about the botched response, but last month she found some body camera videos online.
“She was so mad,” Veloz said of learning about Mia. “She couldn’t believe they were there.”
Mia was able to tell CNN days later how she bloodied herself and played dead, hoping the gunman would spare her if she returned from the classroom next door. She even testified to the U.S. Congress in a video message to a House committee investigating gun violence that she wanted “to be safe.”
These days, Mia finds it hard to open up to strangers, her mother said. The only people she trusts are family.
Her parents said hearing her 911 call gave them “a picture in our heads” of what she was telling them.
“Now we understand why she doesn’t want to go anywhere,” Veloz said.
They find bullet fragments still embedded in her back, and the emotional trauma is almost visible.
“She’s not Mia anymore,” her mother said simply, recalling how her middle child loved to play pranks with her siblings and now feared any loud noise.
This week is Mia’s birthday. She will be 12 on Friday. Her birthday wish, her mother said, was to shut up and get out of Uvalde for the day.
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