A 9-year-old boy who was blasted in the leg in Tuesday’s slaughter in Texas told his grandmother that the gunshots “sounded like fireworks,” she said in an interview.
“He goes, ‘It sounded like fireworks, Grandma.’ It was in his classroom,” she told KENS 5.
She said that her grandson was frightened after he was shot in the leg at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde but has already been released from the hospital.
He was feeling well enough to snap a photo with the police officers who walked him out, said the woman, who was not named.
“He has just been released, thank you God,” she said, relieved. “It didn’t go through any bone. It didn’t do any damage, hopefully no nerve damage and stuff, but he was just released and we thank God for that.”
She acknowledged other families were not so lucky. The shooting left at least 19 children and one teacher dead.
“We’re praying for all of the children that were taken by this mass murderer. He took a life of a teacher. And all these families are at a loss for everything that’s happened,” she told KENS 5.
The grandmother described the frantic moments as she and her daughter — the boy’s mother — learned that there were shots fired at the elementary school and then learned that the 9-year-old boy was one of the victims.
She said it was like being “in a fog.”
“I had gone to the civic center because my daughter was waiting for him,” she said. “I called her, I go, ‘There’s been a shooting at the school.’ She was like, ‘Where?’ I said at Robb and she’s like, ‘Oh, no, mom,’ — you know, her son. She took off over there and I called her. She wouldn’t answer me and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And she’s like, ‘He was shot.'”
“And I took off, I didn’t even know where I was driving to,” she said. “I was like in a fog. In a fog. I mean, he’s the baby. But now he’s home. He’s gonna go home and rest now.”
She said her daughter burst into tears when her son walked out of the hospital.
Uvalde, a small, close-knit town of about 16,000 people about 85 miles west of San Antonio will recover, she said.
“This is a small town, small community,” she told the outlet. “I know it’s going to bring us tighter and closer together. I just I pray for everybody, I do, and I am so happy that my grandson is fine. He’s scared right now, he said he was scared but he’s fine.”
The shooter, identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, shot and killed his grandmother before crashing his car outside the school — storming it with two assault rifles he’d recently bought on his 18th birthday, officials said.
The teacher who was killed was later identified as Eva Mireles.
Ramos was killed by police who responded to the shooting.
