Uvalde teacher probably saved class by playing dead: student

Playing dead probably saved a class’ life.

As soon as gunshots rang out at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, teacher Elsa Avila rushed to the door, jammed a broken key in it so the gunman couldn’t get in, and then dropped to the ground, playing dead, when he fired through it.

She hit the lights and shushed the students, telling them to get down and lie still. They all complied, even as bullets whizzed past them, one ricocheting and hitting a student in the nose.

Just down the hall were the two rooms where the shooter would hunker down, massacring 19 students and two teachers. They were in Rooms 111 and 112.

Student Daniel Garza and his fourth-grade classmates were crouched under their desks in Room 109.

Daniel, 9, described the scene as the gunman unleashed two or three bullets that broke the door’s glass, then a couple more before moving back to the classroom next door.

“I was scared and nervous, because the bullets almost hit me,” he told The Washington Post. “Some of us, the ones thinking he could see us, they acted like we got shot and stuff. They were playing dead.”

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Daniel and his mother had nothing but gratitude for Avila, who kept her cool throughout the ordeal.

“She had some blood on her, but she was like whispering, ‘Stay calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,’ ” Daniel told The Washington Post.

“I personally can’t thank my son’s teacher enough,” Daniel’s mother, Briana Ruiz, told ABC News. “I think what she did saved all of their lives.”

Daniel is traumatized, not least of all because he lost numerous friends and his beloved cousin, Ellie Garcia, in the tragedy. But he wants the world to know what they went through, what Avila did, and highlight the heroism of his class, his mother told The Washington Post.

“That’s why I agreed to let him do this,” Ruiz told ABC News. “If he feels like it’s going to help him, I’m OK with it, because I do want him to recover.”

Her feelings are compounded by the fact that the gunman was once her student when she was a teaching assistant years ago.

“The child that made it home, thankfully they are here. But mentally and emotionally, a piece of that child that left their home that morning never came back with them,” Ruiz, 31, told The Washington Post. “They are traumatized, and they have to deal with it for the rest of their lives.”