Survivor of Uvalde massacre delivers chilling testimony to US Congress

Published on: 06/09/2022 – 03:21 An 11-year-old girl described to American elected officials on Wednesday the horror she experienced when a high school student armed with an assault rifle massacred, on May 24, 19 of his classmates and two teachers at his school in Uvalde, Texas. His testimony comes as Congress debates limited gun control after decades of inaction. “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 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, testified on Wednesday 8 June before the United States Congress, more than ever under pressure to adopt measures to control firearms. On May 24, an 18-year-old high school student carrying an assault rifle killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in a school 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 blackboard “, testified the 11-year-old girl, during a hearing on Capitol Hill on the “epidemic of gun violence”. “Schools are no longer safe” “When I got closer 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 comments broadcast p ar video. “So I took some blood and smeared it all over myself… I was quiet, then I grabbed my teacher’s phone and called (the emergency number) 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 audition, her father Miguel tearfully claimed that Miah was “no longer the same little girl he used to be with. to play”. “Schools are no longer safe, something really has to change,” he pleaded. “Stubbornness” or “passivity” decades of inaction, was also confronted with the testimony of Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician from Uvalde, who described the bodies of children “pulverized”, “decapitated”, “shredded” by the bullets. “What I can’t understand is if our politicians let us down out of stubbornness, passivity, or both,” he blasted. Zeneta Everhart, whose 21-year-old boy survived the racist massacre of 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 an AR-15 (assault rifle) bullet. While cleaning his wounds I can still feel pieces of the 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 nearly one in three adults owns at least one gun, conservatives strongly oppose any measures that could violate the rights of “law-abiding citizens”. The majority of Joe Biden’s party in Congress won’t allow him to pass a gun law on his own, so the challenge is to find measures that could win the support of Republicans. 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. In parallel, the House of Representatives voted Wednesday evening in favor of another major bill which would prohibit, among other things, the sale of semi-automatic rifles to those under 21 and that of high-capacity magazines. These measures 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. With AFP