A father whose daughter survived the massacre in Uvalde, Texas claimed community members are facing harassment from law enforcement.
“…they just pull us over for no reason telling us to leave…”
(Video: CNN Max)
This week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report detailing their findings regarding the official response to the May 24, 2022 tragedy at Robb Elementary School where 19 students and two teachers were killed. As it addressed the “cascading failures of leadership,” CNN anchor Jim Acosta welcomed the father of a survivor who claimed the failings led to abuses of power.
“I live a few houses down from one of the police officers that was there, and I got to see him every day,” said Miguel Cerrillo whose daughter Miah, then 11 years old, had survived the massacre by reportedly covering herself in her dead classmate’s blood and playing dead after calling 911 with a friend.
“And it’s hard for us. Like I said, it’s hard for us every day to see these officers still in the street patrolling and still harassing us every day for no reason. They’re just pulling us over for, for no reason,” the father claimed. “And they still have, they still having them running around in the streets, you know, and not doing nothing, just harassing people.”
Appearing stunned by the allegation, Acosta sought clarity from Cerrillo and asked, “What do you mean by that, harassing people?”
To that, he contended, “We got a few families, including myself, that they literally want to — they could — they just pull us over for no reason telling us to leave Uvalde, telling us all sorts of stuff because they know that the truth was gonna come out, and they didn’t want us here.”
Cerrillo, who told the anchor he lives “literally…right behind Robb Elementary,” had been brought on to react to the DOJ report on which he told Acosta, “The first five minutes that I read the report, I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t — I was in a rage, I was anger [sic], I was really, really, really mad.”
Within the report, the Justice Department detailed what many had already acknowledged based on footage from within the school: “The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using the resources and equipment that were sufficient to push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms 111/112 and the threat was eliminated.”
“That is unbelievable,” reacted Acosta to the father’s claim before inviting, “Well, what do you want to say to them?”
“I really gotta say, I gotta say to them and Governor Abbott…he’s not taking care of us…he’s not worried about us. He’s just worried about himself. And to change the gun law. He could do it, but he doesn’t want to. Like I said, he’s just taking care of himself and his people,” said Cerrillo. “Two, the officers here, I really believe, including the chief of police that is in charge still — I really believe that you should get the whole police station fired because…they left us. They left my kid. And not only my kid, but several kids in the classroom to die.”
It remained unclear if Acosta reached out to law enforcement in Uvalde for comment on the father’s claims. Meanwhile, Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell convened a grand jury regarding the massacre following the DOJ report.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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