On Tuesday, high school dropout turned school shooter, Salvador Ramos, barricaded himself inside a 4th-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where he proceeded to shoot and kill 19 children and 2 teachers.
Now, according to a new report from NBC News, one Uvalde teacher has broken her silence on what she describes as “the longest 35 minutes of my life.”
But she wasn’t so willing to speak with reporters on the subject to start with.
NBC reports that the teacher, whose life will never be the same now, wrenched open her door Wednesday night, running on virtually no sleep, her face tear-stricken and puffy, to ask the reporter standing in her doorway, “What do you want me to say? That I can’t eat? That all I hear are their voices screaming? And I can’t help them?”
It was just 28 hours and 45 minutes after she sat terrified in her classroom full of children, trying desperately to keep them quiet and safe, as a gunman murdered 19 of their schoolmates on the other side of her classroom door.
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The teacher eventually agreed to speak with the press, but only on the condition of anonymity. Not only had the school district requested that the teachers and staff members not speak with the media, she was terrified to her core.
The Uvalde teacher says absolutely nothing feels safe or normal now.
She explained to the reporter that her classroom full of students was watching a Disney movie when she heard the first shots fired. She said she never questioned what made the sound; she knew exactly what it was. The Uvalde teacher sprang into action, sprinting to lock her classroom door while shouting for her kids to get under their desks.
She said her kids never missed a beat, doing exactly what they were told as she worked quickly and efficiently to save their lives.
“They’ve been practicing for this day for years,” the teacher explained, referencing active shooter drills that American children have been subjected to for decades now. “They knew this wasn’t a drill. We knew we had to be quiet or else we were going to give ourselves away.”
The Uvalde teacher described her classroom full of kids huddled quietly under their desks, as their fellow schoolmates screamed and cried from their gunshot wounds down the hall. She sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by her children. She did her best to stay calm. She did her best to stay strong.
As her students began to cry, she huddled them around her. She held them like a mother, shushed them softly, and whispered in their ears to pray silently. With all of her strength and love and none of her words, she silently conveyed to her kids: You’re OK. We’re going to be OK.
Police were eventually able to bust the window in the back of the teacher’s classroom and she lined her students up quietly and orderly, no differently than when they head to lunch or recess. She held each and every hand of each and every child and ushered them through the window to safety.
“After the last kid, I turned around to ensure everyone was out,” she said. “I knew I had to go quickly, but I wasn’t leaving until I knew for sure.”
She later met up with her students at a different school facility across town and her afternoon was filled with hugs and cuddles as she comforted her kids who were worried sick about their schoolmates, friends, siblings, and cousins down the hall, who did not get ushered out of a broken back window.
She said as the dust began to settle, parents began to text her: “Thank you for keeping my baby safe.”
“But it’s not just their baby,” the Uvalde teacher told the reporter as she sobbed on her front porch. “That’s my baby, too. They are not my students. They are my children.”
She said she hasn’t even begun to think about what the next school year will be like if she can ever bear to return at all. But as for right now, there are funerals to attend. There are interviews with investigators to sit for, who she says will never be able to truly explain away how an individual would come to shoot up an entire classroom full of innocent children.
But she left the reporter with this as she pulled her screen door closed:
I want you to say this in your article. Our children did not deserve this. They were loved. Not only by their families, but their family at school.”
Read the full article from NBC News here.
Featured image via screen capture
