Texas Girl Smeared Blood On Self, Played Dead To Survive School Shooting

UVALDE, TX — An 11-year-old girl survived the mass shooting at her school in Uvalde, Texas, by making an unfathomable decision: smearing a friend's blood on herself and playing dead as a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle rampaged through the building.

Miah Cerrillo told CNN’s "New Day" her class was watching the film "Lilo and Stitch" when the shooter, later identified by authorities as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school.

Cerrillo was in Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia’s classroom. When one of the teachers went to lock the door, the gunman shot through the door window. The teacher backed away, and the gunman walked in, looked at her, and said, "Goodnight." He shot her, then opened fire on the other teacher and students in the classroom, Miah said. Flying shrapnell struck the girl in the head and shoulders.

The gunman then walked through a door into an adjoining classroom and continued shooting. When the gunfire finally stopped, she said she overheard sad music playing.

Terrified the gunman would return, she and a friend used a teacher's phone to dial 911, then smeared the blood of a dead friend over her body and played dead.

"Miah got some blood and put it on herself so she could pretend she was dead," Cerrillo's aunt Blanca Rivera told KXAS. "It's too much for me to play that scene over and over again, but that's what my sister-in-law said is that she saw her friend full of blood and she got blood and put it on herself."

See also:

• Parent Detained During Shooting At Texas Elementary School: Report
• Texas School Shooting: What We Know About Uvalde Victims
• Gunman Did Not Encounter Officer Before Texas School Shooting: Police
• Slain Uvalde, Texas, Teacher's Husband 'Died Of A Broken Heart'

Abigale Veloz, Miah's mother, has since launched a GoFundMe to help her daughter's recovery.

"Her class room was one of the main rooms that got targeted," she wrote. "With that be said we are asking if people could please donate to her Gofundme she will need a lot of help with all the trauma that she is going through. my daughter is amazing person and is a very good sister to her siblings. we will need help with her medical expenses that were caused by the bullet fragment on her back."

More than $85,000 had been raised by Friday morning.