‘I don’t want it to happen again’: Miah Cerrillo, a girl who covered herself in her friend’s blood to escape the perpetrator of a Texas school shooting, testified before the US Congress on Wednesday, more than ever under pressure to adopt control measures for firearms.
On May 24, an 18-year-old high school student carrying an assault rifle killed 19 schoolchildren and two female teachers at a school in Uvalde, a town west of San Antonio.
The shooter “said ‘good night’ to my teacher and he shot her in the head. Then he shot some of my classmates and the board,” the 11-year-old girl testified during a Capitol hearing on the “epidemic of gun violence.”
“When I got close to the backpacks, he shot my friend who was right next to me and I thought he was going to come back into the room,” said the little girl with glasses in broadcast comments by video.
“So I took some blood and smeared it all over myself… I was silent, then I grabbed my teacher’s phone and called [le numéro d’urgence] 911.”
Miah Cerrillo assured that she no longer felt safe at school.
“I don’t want this to happen again,” she implored.
Present at the hearing, his father Miguel said in tears that Miah was “no longer the same little girl he used to play with”.
“Schools are no longer safe, something really has to change,” he pleaded.
“Stubbornness” or “passivity”
The United States Congress, which is currently debating a limited regulation of firearms after decades of inaction, has also been confronted with the testimony of Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician from Uvalde, who described the bodies of children ” pulverized”, “decapitated”, “torn to pieces” by the bullets.
“What I can’t understand is whether our politicians let us down out of stubbornness, passivity, or both,” he blasted.
Zeneta Everhart, whose 21-year-old boy survived the racist killing spree in a Buffalo supermarket last month, also challenged elected officials.
“My son Zaire has a hole on the right side of his neck, two on his back, and another on his left leg, caused by the impact of a ball from [fusil d’assaut] AR-15. While cleaning his wounds I can still feel pieces of bullet in his back, ”she said.
“Now I want you to imagine this exact scenario for one of your children. »
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to act against this appalling scourge that successive governments have so far been unable to stem. But in a country where almost one in three adults owns at least one firearm, conservatives strongly oppose any measures that could violate the rights of “law-abiding citizens”.
The narrow majority of Joe Biden’s party in Congress does not allow him to pass a gun law alone, so the challenge is to find measures that could obtain the support of Republicans.
Senate negotiations
Discussions in the Senate currently revolve around limited proposals, such as the verification of the criminal or psychological background of purchasers of individual weapons, which associations have been calling for for years.
Its Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that the upper house would vote on “measures to regulate firearms”, without giving further details.
At the same time, the House of Representatives is debating another major bill which would, among other things, ban the sale of semi-automatic rifles to those under 21 and that of high-capacity magazines.
These measures will be put to a vote on Wednesday evening, but are strongly criticized by the Republican opposition. It therefore seems impossible that they can pass the stage of the Senate, where the support of 10 conservatives is necessary because of the rules of qualified majority.