Fourth-grade Robb Elementary school teacher Arnulfo Reyes says he was “destroyed” inside after a gunman spent 77 minutes killing 19 students – including 11 in Reyes’ classroom, and two teachers.
Reyes, who sustained multiple gunshot wounds, called local police “cowards” for waiting outside and restraining parents while 18-year-old Salvador Ramos committed mass murder.
Reyes said that before Ramos entered his classroom, he immediately “knew something was wrong” upon hearing two shots ring out. He told his students, “Get under the table and act like you’re asleep,” before the gunman burst in and started firing.
Reyes told the 10 and 11-year-olds to keep quiet.
“I prayed that I wouldn’t hear none of my students talk,” he said, adding “And I didn’t hear talk for a while. But then, later on, he did shoot again. So, if he didn’t get them the first time, he got them the second time.”
The teacher then pretended to be unconscious himself. “And that was the second time he got me,” he said. “Just to make sure that I was dead.”
“I had no concept of time,” Reyes continued. “When things go bad, it seems like eternity. The only thing that I can say is I felt like my blood was like an hourglass.”
Reyes has had five surgeries and had his blood replaced twice since the shooting.
Police fail
According to Reyes, he heard officers in the hallway approach his classroom three times, but they failed to enter. In one instance, he said a student was calling for the police in the next classroom over to no avail.
“One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying, ‘Officer, we’re in here. We’re in here’…But the [police] had already left,” he said. “And then [the gunman] got up from behind my desk and he walked over there, and he shot again.”
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