“He came in and shot her,” fourth-grade Uvalde survivor reveals a terrifying encounter with the gunman

A fourth-grader who survived Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, said he witnessed the gunman’s cold-blooded attack on children as he hid under a table and waited for help to arrive.

The unnamed boy told local news agency KENS 5 that the gunman, identified by authorities as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, said “it’s time to die” after barricading himself in the classroom. While police have yet to determine the motive for the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers, the boy’s account provides some of the first details of how things unfolded in the barricaded classroom when the shooter was an elementary school student killed with an assault rifle.

“When I heard the shots through the door, I told my friend to hide under something so he doesn’t find us. I hid hard And I told my friend not to talk because he will hear us,” the boy said.

The boy, along with four other children he was hiding with, was likely spared because a tablecloth kept them away from the shooter.

But he said one person in the classroom was targeted after responding to a police officer who arrived at the scene.

“When the cops came, the cop said, ‘Shout if you need help!’ And one of the people in my class said ‘Help!’ The guy heard and came in and shot her,” the boy told KENS 5.

It was not immediately clear if she was among those killed or if she was one of the 17 injured.

Two teachers were shot while trying to shield the students. About Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, the boy said: “They were nice teachers. They went in front of my classmates to help. To save her.”

“I want to tell every child and parent that they are safe,” he said.

The students are believed to have been trapped in the classroom with the gunman for around an hour before authorities were able to gain entry. Witnesses said some police officers hung out in front of the school instead of entering it. Questions about security protocols have also surfaced, as tactical officers who arrived first were unable to breach the steel classroom door and had to wait to be given a master key by the principal.

Some parents who rushed to the school after the first alert about an “active gunman” on campus took matters into their own hands, smashing windows and trying to get children to safety.

Miguel Cerrillo, the father of an 11-year-old girl who survived the attack, recounted The Washington Post He’d watched a policeman carry her out covered in blood.

“I panicked,” he said, recalling his daughter Miah telling him what she had seen.

He said she watched the gunman kill her teacher, Eva Mireles, who was clutching a phone when she was hit. Miah picked up the phone and called 911, then played dead in a desperate attempt to avoid being targeted.

But she had to be lying on top of a classmate who had been shot, Cerrillo said, and she stayed there even when the other girl, a friend, finally stopped breathing.

Miah, whose entire left side was ripped through by small bullet fragments, was released late Tuesday but spent the night in fear, he said, urging him to get his gun because “he’s going to come get us.”