Children who survived the Uvalde massacre are heartbroken because they couldn’t save their friends

Uvalde, Texas () — Every day, 9-year-old AJ Martinez tells his mother he wishes he could have saved his friends from the gunman who killed them.

With a child’s powerful yet fanciful belief in his own abilities, he tells his mom he wishes he could have run for help or rescued his classmates from the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. .

Instead, the reality of what happens when an attacker armed with an assault rifle chooses to massacre an elementary school is what he remembers.

“He just saw the shooter come to the door and tell his teacher, ‘Good night,’ and he shot him,” AJ’s mother, Kassandra Chavez, told . “And then (the attacker) just announced, ‘Is everyone ready to die?’ and he went crazy, my son said, with a gun shooting everywhere.”

Jaydien Canizales, 10, remembers that too: how her teacher fell on one of her friends and how the attacker got down on one knee as he headed into the fourth grade room with his threats.

Two teachers and 19 students, ages 9 to 11, were killed that day in the Uvalde massacre.

AJ hid under the backpacks. Jaydien and a friend took cover under a table with a curtain and tried to get others to join them as they closed their eyes and covered their ears against the horror.

Ten-year-old Noah Orona feared he was too tall to get under the table with Jaydien. He was shot in the back and fell to the floor of Room 112, his mother, Jessica Orona, said.

They had to stay there for 77 minutes, until law enforcement officers opened the door to the joint 111 classroom and confronted the attacker, killing him.

Orona described some of the sights and sounds of those 77 minutes that Noah has told her about. “One of the little girls he was in bed with, all he could hear was her gurgling because he was trying to breathe but he couldn’t because he was shot and you could hear him choking,” he said.

Chavez recalled seeing AJ in the hospital, his face smeared with someone else’s blood, probably from him lying on the floor. “I just saw my son’s face bloody. And I thought, where is he bleeding from? And the doctor said, ‘Okay. That’s not his,'” he said.

The distressing memory of the Uvalde massacre

Arguments and anger over how long it took authorities to enter the classroom continue to rage in Uvalde, the Austin state capital, and beyond. What the officers were doing while the gunman was inside the classrooms remains largely unclear, and some officials have questioned the reliability of the various investigations working to understand what went wrong.

Scenes from that day and the anguished wait were also left for the parents. Chavez told his son what it was like outside the school, where families gathered minutes after the shooting began.

Kassandra Chavez’s son, AJ, still had someone else’s blood on his face when she met him at the hospital.

“We’re waiting to hear or for something to happen. News that you came out and you’re lying on the floor bleeding while all the cops were standing in the hallway,” he told AJ.

Orona said that the delay was impossible to explain to Noah. “You know, to tell them, ‘Yeah, they were there, but no one came to help him.'”

AJ heard the officers just outside the classroom door. Jayden too. Her mother said she remembers the police asking the children to call for help if they needed it. But a girl who did exactly that caught the attention of the attacker, who then shot her dead.

Families are unsure of what lies ahead

This Tuesday marks seven weeks since the massacre. The families of the survivors still do not really know what awaits them.

“You would think things are getting back to normal, as people assume they are, just because (my son) is alive and here, but it’s not,” Orona said. “My son has trouble sleeping, being in a big crowd, anything loud scares him, being alone.”

“Of course we feel blessed that he is here … but every day is a struggle. It is something that is not going to be cured in a week, a month,” he continued.

Noah Orona’s mother said she has had trouble sleeping since the attack.

Jaydien’s mother, Azeneth Rodriguez, added: “He will remember what happened that day and it will stick in his head for the rest of his life.”

Families knew to keep their children away from the Fourth of July fireworks with all the sounds of explosions, but there are plenty of other triggers, they said.

“We were at a barbecue the other day and he was like, ‘What’s that smell, that burning smell?'” Orona said of her son, Noah. “And I was like, ‘What’s up?’ And he just said, ‘I smell that smoke smell, and that’s what we were like in the classroom.

“Our children are no longer the same”

AJ Martinez, right, with his brother and sister.

AJ and Jaydien often get angry about what they didn’t get to do and no one else did, their mothers say.

After an outburst, AJ collapsed, Chavez said. “He told me: ‘Mom, I hate the attacker. I hate that he killed my friends and my two teachers.'”

Jaydien asked to speak to to give her version of what went wrong at the school. “If we had more people, this would never have happened,” he said, referring to the police officers.

He lost his cousin, Rojelio Torres, and his best friend, Jayce Luevanos, both 10 years old, in the classroom next door.

Jaydien said he would play hide-and-seek or play every recess with Rojelio, left, and Jayce.

He said he now wants “police everywhere” to stop more violence, but when asked what makes it difficult today, he replied: “That my mom can barely afford anything.”

Rodriguez said he hadn’t been to work since May 24, the day of the shooting. There has been financial assistance, but he had to go get it, no one was calling to sign up or offer it.

Chavez chimed in: “We don’t want to upset or upset anyone with this, but at the same time, the bills don’t stop.”

And those bills will include doctor visits, therapy, and probably more than families can comprehend at the time they require their time and money.

Orona said, “It’s something that doesn’t have time, to say, okay, give us enough for a month or a year or something. They’re going to have problems for the rest of their lives… …our children aren’t the ones anymore.” themselves. They’re not like they used to be.”

Some parents of the surviving children have even apologized to the families of the dead because their own sons and daughters are alive. The mothers spoke with said they hadn’t done any media interviews before to make sure grieving families and the people they lost were given attention.

Jessica Orona said noises and smells can suddenly remind her son, Noah, that he’s trapped in the classroom.

Orona believes that her son had a purpose in being forgiven. Rodriguez fears something more bad could happen to Jaydien at any moment. Chavez says that he does everything he can to take care of AJ without neglecting her other two children.

She fought not to cry in front of her son at the hospital as she wiped someone else’s blood from her face.

Orona says that she has not cried at all.

“The day that happened, I closed myself off and said, ‘I have to be strong for my son.’ And it’s been hard. There are times when I just want to break down and cry, but I can’t afford to do that,” she said.

“I don’t dare cry right now. Maybe in a couple of months I could completely collapse. But I, I just, it’s too hard.”