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Gun Massacre Survivors Testify at House Oversight Hearing. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 08, 2022 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

ZENETA EVERHART, SON SURVIVED GUNSHOT WOUND TONECK IN BUFFALO ATTACK At the end of the day, I bleed, you bleed, we are all human.

That awful day that will now be a part of the history books, hopefully, let us not forget to add that horrific day to the curriculum that we teach our children, guns.

The 18-year-old terrorist who stormed into my community armed with an AR-15 killing ten people and injuring three others received a shotgun from his parents for his 16th birthday. For Zaire's 16th birthday, I bought him a few video games, headphones, a pizza and a cake. We are not the same. How and why and what in the world is wrong with this country?

Children should not be armed with weapons. Parents who provide their children with guns should be held accountable. Lawmakers who continuously allow these mass shootings to continue by not passing stricter gun laws should be voted out.

To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need stricter gun laws, let me paint a picture for you. My son, Zaire, has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg caused by exploding bullet from an AR-15. As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left in his body for the rest of his life.

Now, I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children. This should not be your story or mine. As an elected official, it is your duty to draft legislation that protects Zaire and all of the children and citizens in this country. Commonsense gun laws are not about your personal feelings or beliefs. You are elected because you have been chosen and are trusted to protect us. But let me say to you here, I do not feel protected.

No citizen needs an AR-15. These weapons are designed to do the most harm in the least amount of time. And on Saturday, May 14th, it took a domestic terrorist just two minutes to shoot and kill ten people and injure three others. If after hearing from me and the other people testifying here today does not move you to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me clean Zaire's wounds so that you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and to my community. To the families of Ruth Whitfield, Pearl Young, Katherine Massey, Hayward Patterson, Celestine Chaney, Geraldine Talley, Aaron Salter, Andre Mackneil, Margus Morrison and Roberta Drury, I promise that their deaths will not be in vain. Zaire and I promise to use our voice to lift their names and we will to carry their spirit with us to embark on this journey to create change. I know that their collective souls watched out for Zaire that day and I am eternally grateful to them for that.

To the east side of Buffalo, I love you. I'm speaking directly to my people, to my hood. From Bailey to Broadway, to Kinzington, to Fillmore, to Delavan, to Jefferson and every street in between, just like the potholes we want filled in, yes, I keep it real, together, we will continue to fill those streets with love no matter what people say about the east side of Buffalo. We will not be broken.

I was born there, raised there. I raised my son there. I still live there, and I do the majority of my professional work on the east side of Buffalo. I vow to you today that everywhere I go, I will make sure that the people here, the real stories of our people, for too long, our community has been neglected and starved of the resources that we so greatly need.

I promise that I will not stop pushing for more resources to be funneled into the east side of Buffalo. Each and every person that lives within that community, we are family. Not a perfect community, but I know that we are loved.

To the greater Buffalo area, the everyone from around and the world that reached out and loved on us, on behalf of Zaire, Zaire's father, Damien Goodman, my mother, my father, my sisters, my brothers and myself, we thank you. We thank you for all of your thoughts and your prayers. Thank you for all of the love and support you have shown us during this difficult time.

But I also say to you today with a heart full from the outpouring of love that you also freely gave us, your thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need you to stand with us in the days, weeks, months and years to come, and be ready to go to work and help us to create the change that this country so desperately needs.

And I will end with a quote from Charles Bloom, and his book, The Devil We Know.

[10:35:01]

Race, as we have come to understand it, is a fiction, but racism, as we have come to live it, is a fact. The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy but to remove an existing one. After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it is, to me, that it has fallen to black people to do it themselves and I stand at the ready. Zaire, this is for you, kid. Happy birthday.

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D-NY): Thank you. Dr. Guerrero, you are now recognized for your testimony.

DR. ROY GUERRERO, PEDIATRICIAN WHO TREATED VICTIMS OF UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING: Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman.

My name is Dr. Roy Guerrero. I'm a board-certified pediatrician and was president at Uvalde Memorial Hospital. The day of the massacre on May 24th, 2022, at Robb Elementary School, I was called here today as a witness but I showed up because I am a doctor. Because how many years ago I swore an oath, an oath to do no harm.

After witnessing firsthand the carnage in my hometown of Uvalde, to stay silent would have betrayed that oath. Inaction to harm. Passivity is harm. Delay is harm. So, here I am, not to plead, not to beg or convince you of anything, but to do my job, and hope that by doing so would inspire the members of the House to do theirs.

I've lived in Uvalde my whole life. In fact, I attended Robb Elementary School as a kid. As often as the case with us grown-ups, remember a lot of the good and not so much of the bad. So, I don't recall homework or detention.

I remember how much I loved going to school, what a joyful time it was. Back then, we were able to run between classrooms with ease to visit our friends, and I remember the way the cafeteria smelled at lunchtime with Hamburger Thursdays.

It was around lunchtime on a Tuesday that the gunman entered the school through a main door without restriction, massacred 19 students and two teachers, and changed the way that every student at Robb and their family remember that school forever.

I doubt remember the smell of the cafeteria or the laughter ringing in the hallways. Instead, they will be haunted by the memory of screams and bloodshed, panic and chaos, police shouting, parents wailing. I know I will never forget what I saw that day.

For me, that day started like any typical Tuesday in our pediatric clinic, moms calling for coughs, boogers, sports physicals, right before the summer rush. School was out in two days, then summer camps would guarantee some grazes and ankle sprains, injuries that could be patched up and fixed with a Mickey Mouse sticker as a reward.

Then at 12:30, business as usual stopped and with it, my heart. A colleague from a San Antonio Trauma Center texted me and said why are pediatric surgeons and anesthesiologists on call for a mass shooting in Uvalde? I raced to the hospital to find parents outside yelling children's names in desperation and sobbing as they begged for any news related to their child. Those mother's cries, that will never get out of my head.

As I entered the chaos of the E.R., the first casualty I came across with Miah Cerrillo, she was sitting in the hallway, her face still clearly in shock but her whole body shaking from the adrenaline coursing through it. The white Lilo and Stitch shirt that she wore was covered in blood and her shoulder was bleeding from a shrapnel injury.

Sweet Miah, I have known her my whole life. As a baby, she survived major liver surgeries against all odds, and, once again, she's here as a survivor, inspiring us with her story today and her bravery. When I saw Miah sitting there, I remember having seen her parents outside. So, after quickly examining two other patients of mine in the hallway with minor injuries, I raced outside to let them know that Miah was alive.

I wasn't ready for their next urgent and desperate question. Where's Elena (ph)? Elena (ph) is Miah's eight-year-old sister who was also at Robb at the time of the shooting. I had heard from some of the nurses that there were two dead children who had been moved to the surgical area of the hospital.

As I made my way there, I prayed that I wouldn't find her. I didn't find Elena (ph). But what I did find was something no prayer would ever relieve. Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart, that the only clue of their identities was a blood splattered cartoon cloth still clinging to them, clinging for life and finding none.

I could only hope these two bodies were a tragic exception to the list of survivors, but as I waited there with my fellow Uvalde doctors, nurses and first responders and hospital staff for other casualties we hope to save, they never arrived. All that remained was the bodies of 17 more children and two teachers who cared for them, who dedicated their careers to nurturing and respecting the awesome potential every single one, just as we doctors do.

[10:40:05]

I'll tell you why I became a pediatrician, because I knew children were the best patients. They accept the situation as it's explained to them. You don't have to coax them into changing their lifestyles in order to get better or plead them to modify behavior as you do with adults. No matter how hard you try to help an adult, their path to healing is always determined by how willing they are to take action. Adults are stubborn. We're resistant to change even when the change will make things better for ourselves but especially when we think we're immune to the fallout.

Why else would have been such little progress made in Congress to stop gun violence? Innocent children all over the country today are dead because laws and policies allows people to buy weapons before they're legally old enough to even buy a pack of beer. They're dead because of restrictions have been allowed to lapse. They're dead because there are no rules about where guns are kept because no one is paying attention to who is buying them.

The thing I can't figure out is whether our politicians are failing us out of stubbornness, passivity, or both. I said before that, as grown- ups, we have a convenient habit of remember the good and forgetting the bad, never once more so than when it comes to our guns. Once the blood is rinsed away from the bodies of our loved ones and scrubbed off the floors of the schools and supermarkets and churches, the carnage from each scene is erased from our collective conscience and we return again to nostalgia.

To the rose-tinted view of our Second Amendment as a perfect instrument of American life, no matter how many lives are lost. I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of children. Keeping them safe from preventable diseases I can do, keeping them safe from bacteria and brittle bones, I can do, but making sure our children are safe from guns, that's the job of our politicians and leaders.

In this case, you are the doctors, and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out and you are not there.

My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job, and I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours.

MALONEY: Thank you. We will now play the video from Miah.

MIAH CERRILLO, FOURTH-GRADER WHO SURVIVED UVALDE SHOOTING BY PLAYING DEAD: My name is Miah Cerrillo and (INAUDIBLE).

We were just watching T.V. and then she got at (INAUDIBLE). She went to go lock the door and he was in the hallway. And they made eye contact. And then she went to the back of the room to go hide and then we went to go hide behind the teacher's desk and behind the (INAUDIBLE).

Then he shot the little window and then he went to the other classroom, and then he went -- there's a door between our classrooms, and he went there and shot my teacher and told my teacher good night and shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates and the white board.

When I went to the (INAUDIBLE), he shot my friend that was (INAUDIBLE) to me and I thought he was going to come back to the room. So, I grabbed little blood and I put it all over me and --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you do then when you put the blood on yourself?

MIAH CERRILLO: To stay quiet and then I got my teacher's phone and called 911.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what did you tell 911?

MIAH CERRILLO: I told her that we need help and she sent the police in our classroom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there was something that you want people to know about you or things that you want different, what would it be?

[10:45:02]

MIAH CERRILLO: To have security.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you feel safe at school? Why not?

MIAH CERRILLO: Because I don't want it to happen again. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And do you think it is going to happen again?

MALONEY: Mr. Cerrillo, you are now recognized.

MIGUEL CERRILLO, FATHER OF FOURTH-GRADER WHO SURVIVED UVALDE SHOOTING: Hello. Today, I come because I love my baby girl, but she is not the same little girl that I used to play with, hang around with and do everything, because she was daddy's little girl. I have five kids and she's the middle child. I don't know what to do because I think I would have lost my baby girl. My baby girl (INAUDIBLE) not only once but twice she came back to us. She's everything, not only for me but her siblings and her mother.

I thank you for letting me be here and speak out but I wish something will change, not only for our kids but every single kid in the world because schools are not safe anymore. Something needs to really change. Thank you.

MALONEY: Thank you for your testimony, and I understand you are now leaving. We thank you for sharing your story.

Thank you. And Mr. and Mrs. Rubio, you are now recognized for your testimony.

KIMBERLY RUBIO, TEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, LEXI, KILLED IN UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING: I am Kimberly Rubio. This is Felix Rubio. We're the parents of Alexandria Aniyah, best known as Lexi Rubio, and five other children who all attended Uvalde public schools during the 2021-2022 school year, Calisa (ph), who completed high school this year, Isaiah, who attends Uvalde High School, David, Morales Junior High, Jolina (ph), Flores Elementary, and our two youngest children, Julian, eight, and Lexi, ten, who were at Robb Elementary.

On the morning of May 24th, 2022, I dropped Lexi and Julian off at school a little after 7:00 A.M. My husband and I returned to the campus at 8:00 A.M. for Julian's award ceremony and again at 10:30 A.M. for Lexi's award ceremony. Lexi received the good citizen award and was also recognized for receiving all As.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, we took photos with her before asking her to pose for a picture with her teacher, Mr. Reyes. That photo, her last photo ever was taken at approximately 10:54 A.M.

To celebrate, we promised to get the ice cream (INAUDIBLE). We told her we loved her and we would pick her up after school. I can still see her walking with us toward the exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she turns her head and smiles back us to acknowledge my promise, and then we left. I left my daughter at that school, and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Afterward, Felix dropped me off at my office, the Uvalde Leader News and returned home because it was a rare day off between normal shifts and security gigs he takes to help make ends meet. I got situated at my desk and began writing about a new business in town when the news office started hearing commotion on the police scanner, a shooting on Diaz Street near Robb Elementary. It wasn't long before we received word from my son's teacher that they were safe, secure in the classroom. Once evacuated from campus, the children reunited with parents and guardians at the civic center. My dad picked up Julian from the civic center and took him to my grandmother's house. One of our Robb kids was safe.

We focused on finding Lexi. Bus after bus arrived but she wasn't on board. We heard there were children at the local hospital, so we drove over to provide her description. She wasn't there. My dad drove an hour-and-a-half to San Antonio to check with the University Hospital.

At this point, some part of me must have realized she was gone. In the midst of chaos, I had the urge to return to Robb. We didn't have our car at this point. Traffic was everywhere. So, I ran, ran barefoot with my flimsy sandals and my hat. I ran a mile to the school, my husband with me

[10:50:00]

We sat outside for a while before it became clear we wouldn't receive an answer from law enforcement on scene.

A San Antonio firefighter eventually gave us a ride back to the civic center where the district was asking all families who had not been reunited with their children to gather. Soon after, we received the news that our daughter was among the 19 students and two teachers that died as a result of gun violence.

We don't want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic, she was quiet, shy unless she had a point to make. She was right, as she often was, stood her ground. She was firm, direct voice on (INAUDIBLE).

So, today, we stand for Lexi, and as her voice, we demand action. We seek a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. We understand that for some reason, to some people, to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns, the guns are more important than children.

So, at this moment, we ask for progress. We seek to raise the age to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of age. We seek red flag laws, stronger background checks. We also want to repeal gun manufacturer's liability immunity.

We've all seen glimpses of Lexi was but I also want to tell you a little bit about who she would have been. If given the opportunity, Lexi would have made a positive change in this world. She wanted to attend St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, on a softball scholarship. She wanted to major in math and go on to attend law school. That opportunity was taken from her. She was taken from us.

I'm a reporter, a student, a mom, a runner. I've read to my children since they were in the womb. My husband is a law enforcement officer, an Iraq war veteran, he loves fishing and our babies. Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony thinking, I can't even imagine their pain, not knowing that our reality will one day be hers, unless we act now. Thank you for your time.

MALONEY: Thank you for your testimony. Ms. Hughes, you are now recognized for your testimony.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): I personally have never seen anything like it. I've never seen anything like it. This is a mother speaking through tears, describing what her ten-year-old daughter would have done had she not been murdered. She wants to play softball, study math, go to law school. We have a doctor, a pediatrician who talks about treating skinned knees who found children decapitated by gunshot wounds. And then you hear an 11-year-old girl describe she had to put blood on herself to survive.

I don't know how -- I've never seen anything like it and I don't know how folks can hear that and not do something. I don't know. So --

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And Miguel Cerrillo, the father of Miah, the fourth grader who survived, said, my little girl will never be the same. You heard her testimony.

SCIUTTO: How could she be?

HARLOW: No. She can't go to school. She's terrified and he talked about losing that little girl. He knew that day.

We have our colleagues with us who have been around the clock working and asking for answers on the ground and in Washington, and at the White House. Omar Jimenez?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Poppy and Jim, I mean, as everything we've heard in this testimony is what we've heard from families here on the ground. The grandfather of another girl who's injured said she still hears the sound of bullets. She gets scared at even the slightest sound. These are something that are going to be sticking with these kids for the rest of their lives.

And we listen to the testimony of Kimberly Rubio, the mother of Lexi Rubio, who was killed in this and the guilt, the decisions that she couldn't have known would have ended up this way, the decision to leave or drop her child off at school that day, and that decision will haunt her for the rest of her life.

[10:55:03]

School was a place where she thought her daughter was going to be safe, her son as well. And then here we are two weeks later, still waiting for answers from investigators.

We heard, of course, from that pediatric physician who talked about the absolute horror of dealing with these children as they came in one after another.

And I do want to take a minute to point out some of the specifics that we heard from Kimberly Rubio, the mother of Lexi, because this is part of what their stories are about, to try to spur some form of long-term policy change. She wants specifically to seek a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, to raise the age of purchase from 18 to 21, to repeal gun manufacturers' liability immunity, increase red flag laws, stronger background checks. These are things that they want in place so that the memories of their children will matter, they feel.

And that's something that we've heard repeatedly time and time again from people affected by this, but their testimony is the reality of the aftermath of what this does to a community, what this does to a family and what this does to loved ones as they continue to bury their own here in Uvalde.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Lauren Fox, so what's the reality? The fact is many of those things that these parents who lost children listed, these doctors who treated pulverized children, as he described it, ask for it, don't have life on Capitol Hill. We've heard that phrase, this time is different. I can't count the number of times going back to Sandy Hook and beyond and the times have not proven to be different. What practically may get through the Hill this time?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you heard there from the beginning of the hearing the chairwoman urged her Republican colleagues to listen to this testimony today with, quote, an open heart. And the reason for that is because a lot of the items that you heard Lexi's parents arguing that they want from Congress.

They're just simply not part of the negotiations that we have been covering in the U.S. Senate, and that's not because there aren't Democrats who want a ban on assault weapons. You've heard the president, he wants a ban on assault weapons. It's because that is the kind of move that Republicans will not support in the U.S. Senate, and you need at least ten Republican votes to pass that kind of legislation.

What is on the table is so much more narrow than that. And we have discussed this in the past, but if you remember, they are discussing the fact that they are trying to include juvenile records as part of the background check system. If you're between the ages of 18 and 21 and you go into a gun store and you try to buy a gun, like an AR-15, that is a significant change but it falls far short of what you heard parents asking for just moments ago in that hearing.

HARLOW: And, Phil, to you at the White House, what is the White House going to do? What is the president going to do?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's been very interesting, the president's posture obviously coming back from a foreign trip and immediately speaking on this in primetime, giving a high-profile primetime speech last week as well but largely staying out of the negotiations.

And when you talk to White House officials, they made clear that's intentional. The president, obviously, a long time member of the United States Senate, understands it's the senators that are going to have to get in the room and craft a potential agreement.

I will tell you, there is more optimism from White House officials than I've heard at any point over the course, really, of the last 16 months when it comes to the guns issue. Nothing is over the finish line yet but the top Democrat point person on this, Senator Chris Murphy, briefed the president yesterday on the contours of the deal. As Lauren noted, it's not everything the president has laid out but it's something.

And while it's still an open question about getting across the finish line, the idea of getting something done after so many years of falling short due to Republican opposition, that, I think, White House officials are encouraged by. They know it's not there yet.

But I think what you will mostly see is White House officials working behind the scenes trying to do whatever they can on the technical side of things, trying to do whatever they can to give the space to Republicans and Democrats to try and reach a negotiation.

One last point, guys, and I think this is really important. So much of the last decade when it comes to this issue specifically, there's a disconnect between Washington and what's happening on the ground inside the marble hallways of the Capitol, sometimes at the White House as well. This is very real. I've never seen a hearing this quickly bring these poignant, dramatic, heartbreaking stories in the immediate aftermath of something like this.

That matters. Lauren can tell you, these lawmakers are watching. They see this. They know what's happening and it's having an effect at this moment in time.

SCIUTTO: The question is what that effect is, right? Because, at this point in time, the politics on the Hill do not match the emotion and the calls we saw on the hearing or, frankly, what public polls show about wide support for background checks or high-capacity magazine bans, they don't match it.

[11:00:01]

So, the facts on the Hill will have to prove that wrong, because, to date, it hasn't moved the Hill.

Lauren Fox, Phil Mattingly, Omar Jimenez, thanks so much.