Teacher breaks down as she testifies she thought she would die in Uvalde school massacre

By Shimon Prokupecz, Matthew J. Friedman, Rachel Clarke, CNN

(CNN) — Elsa Avila stood up to tell some of her students to hide farther from the window when they heard gunfire at their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“As I stood there, and I was waving them over, that’s when — we were hearing shots, and I felt a shot on my left side,” she said.

“I felt the pain. I felt the burning pain, and I know I yelled, ‘Oh no, I’m shot.’ And I fell to the floor.”

Avila, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary, which was targeted by a teenage gunman, said Tuesday she managed to text for help as she lay on the floor and then thought of her students.

She said she was in immense pain and her legs were shaking, suggesting to her that she was going into shock. So she prayed, “Don’t let me die in front of my students.”

“I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t comfort them,” Avila said, breaking down into tears.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 2022 massacre.

Later that day, she helped push her students to law enforcement officers through a window before she was helped out. With no stretcher available, she had to walk to an ambulance, she said.

The response to the shooting has faced widespread criticism, not only for the actions of law enforcement but also for the medical response and crime scene investigation.

But the case against former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales focuses on the first minutes, as both the gunman and Gonzales arrived on campus.

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty to 29 charges of endangering or abandoning a child. Prosecutors allege he was told where the shooter was heading and had enough time to act.

The attack remains one of the deadliest US school shootings, a continuing scourge that has spurred security measures in classrooms across America.

Avila retired from teaching after the attack, saying she could not even step inside a school. But she missed working with students so much, she said, that she resumed her career, this time at a private parochial school.

• Surviving teacher said his door was not locked: Former teacher Arnulfo Reyes was questioned repeatedly in court Tuesday about how doors were left open at Robb Elementary.

Reyes, the only survivor in his classroom, and called to testify by prosecutors who have accused Gonzales of failing to do enough to stop or delay the shooter.

Defense attorney Nico LaHood had Reyes confirm that the door to his classroom was not locked on the day of the massacre, when Reyes saw sheetrock flying amid gunfire and told his students to hide.

“Hiding the kids isn’t as effective if that door is not locked,” LaHood said, then asking Reyes: “The fact that the door was not locked had an effect on the gunman entering the room?”

“Yes,” Reyes replied.

LaHood also questioned how well the children were hidden in Room 111. They were underneath tables, but unlike in the classroom next door, there were no curtains around the table edges to shield them from view, he said, and Reyes agreed.

Teachers testified earlier in the trial that some rooms had curtains on the tables around the edges to cover supplies stored there.

Reyes said the lights were off in the room and the children went where they were trained to go.

Reyes testified Monday that “a black shadow” holding a gun entered his classroom and shot him, then all the children hid under furniture.

Eleven students were killed in Reyes’ classroom and eight more in a connected classroom. Two teachers died after being shot in the next-door classroom. Ten of their students survived the massacre. It took 77 minutes for the gunman to be stopped by the hundreds of law enforcement officers who converged on the scene after he entered the school.

Reyes has pictures of all the students who were killed on the fence outside his home in Uvalde. On Monday, he looked at photos displayed in court of those who died and the 10 who survived, naming each for the jury.

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