Uvalde teachers shot in massacre share harrowing stories at trial

Editor's note: Some of the testimony described below is extremely graphic.

(UVALDE, Texas) -- Robb Elementary School teacher Elsa Avila was taking photos of her fourth-graders with their science projects on May 24, 2022, when she said a young girl noticed something was wrong -- that other students was running to their classroom and screaming.

Teacher Elsa Avila's testimony

Avila testified that her students immediately hid, as they had during lockdown training.

"We heard loud, loud shots in the hallway," Avila said on Tuesday at the trial of former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer Adrian Gonzales. "They knew that it was, you know, a real thing."

When Avila briefly stood up to instruct her students to make sure everyone was "safe and out of sight," she said she felt a piercing pain on her left side.

"I felt the burning pain," she said. "I put my hand on my side and I saw blood. When I took my hand away, I saw blood. So, I knew that I had been shot."

As she recounted her injury, Avila banged her hands on the witness stand -- the wood ringing from her Rosary ring -- to describe the sounds she heard.

"I fell to the floor, and we kept hearing the shots," she said.

Avila said she was lying on the floor in intense pain and "trying so hard to keep it in."

She said her students tried to comfort her while they sheltered in place.  

"They were hugging each other. They were helping each other stay quiet. Some of them were tapping me. They were telling me, 'Miss, Miss. We love you. We love you. You're going to be OK, you're going to be OK,'" she testified.

Avila's harrowing testimony comes on the second week of Gonzales' trial. Prosecutors allege Gonzales, who is charged with child endangerment, did not follow his training and endangered the 19 students who died and an additional 10 surviving students.

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers argue he is being unfairly blamed for a broader law-enforcement failure that day. It took 77 minutes before law enforcement mounted a counterassault to end the May 2022 rampage.

Avila maintained her composure throughout most of her testimony, though she broke down in tears when she described what she felt in those moments.

"I was in so much pain towards the end there, my body was going into shock, and my legs were already starting to shake. My whole body was starting to shake," she said. "I kept praying, you know, God, please don't let me die."

During a brief cross examination, Avila testified about hearing officers trying to negotiate with the gunman.

"I heard a voice saying, you know, 'Sir, we need you to stop, we don't want anyone else to get hurt,'" she said.

Avila testified that, even when officers broke through her classroom windows to begin rescuing students, some students wanted to stay with her due to her injury.

Teacher Erin Robin's testimony

Second-grade teacher Erin Robin also testified on Tuesday. After hearing about the shooting from a staff member, she said she rushed her students into their classroom, made sure her door was locked and sheltered.

"I thought to myself, 'I'm going to die today,'" she testified. "I felt like a sitting duck just waiting to die."

She said she felt a glimmer of hope when she saw a white, Uvalde school police car arrive outside.

"My first thought was, 'The good guys are here,'" she testified. "The police are here. We're going to be OK."

According to Robin, Gonzales was the first officer she saw respond.

"I saw him go from, like, the driver side around the front to the passenger side. The door was open," she said. "I don't remember if he was looking in the car for something, or if he was using, like, on top of the car, using it as, like a shield."

"And what else did you see the police officer doing?" a prosecutor asked.

"Just kind of moving around the car," Robin said.

Her testimony offers one of the only firsthand accounts of Gonzales' arrival.

Defense lawyers noted that teachers often used magnets to disable the locks on their classroom doors, emphasizing that point to argue that other elements were at play in the shooting.

Robin testified, "I made sure that the door was shut and locked. I removed the magnet from the door frame."

Teacher Arnulfo Reyes' testimony

Former fourth-grade teacher Arnulfo Reyes also testified on Monday and Tuesday, recounting in excruciating detail the moments when gunman Salvador Ramos shot and wounded him and shot and killed all 11 children in his classroom.

Reyes said he fell to the ground after he was struck by gunfire. Then, the shooter "came around and he shot the kids," Reyes testified, maintaining his composure.

After the first series of gunshots, Reyes testified that a student in a nearby classroom mistook Ramos for police.

"A student from that classroom said, 'Officer, come in here. We're in here,'" Reyes testified. "And I heard he walked over there, and I heard more shooting."

As Reyes lay on the ground bleeding from wounds to his arm and back, he said the shooter returned to his classroom and noticed he was still alive.

"He came and he tried to taunt me. He got some of my blood and splashed it on my face," he said.

During cross-examination, defense lawyer Nico LaHood tried to deflect some blame from Gonzales, suggesting Reyes was at least partially at fault for leaving his classroom door unlocked the morning of the shooting.

Off-duty deputy Joe Vasquez's testimony

Another witness on Tuesday was Joe Vasquez, a deputy with the Zavala County Sheriff's Office. He was off-duty when he heard about the shooting at Robb, where his daughter was a second-grader.

Vasquez testified that he rushed to the school, threw a bulletproof vest on top of his gym clothes, grabbed a rifle and ran into the building without a helmet or body camera.

Though the officers in the hallway were not prepared to breach the classroom, Vasquez said he joined a tactical team from the Border Patrol who had arrived.

"Nobody stopped me," he explained.

In detail, Vasquez walked the jury through his experience entering the classroom.

"We make entry, it's dark. Can't see anything. As soon as I make entry, I realized I don't have a flashlight. I can't even see," he said. "So I look to my right, and there's a pile of the bodies."

He testified that he expected to face incoming fire as they stormed the room, but the shooting did not begin immediately.

"You hear a door creak open in front, and then the shooting starts," he said.

Vasquez said he fired multiple rounds during the gunfight.

After the shooter was killed, he said, "They flip him over, and I could tell it's the shooter. He's in all black."

Vasquez said he saw a child who looked older than his daughter in the classroom and began to think she might not be there.

"Once they flooded the classroom, I left to look for my daughter. ... I didn't want to look in there see her in there," he said.

He said he later found his daughter at a reunification center.

Judge threatens mistrial after family member's outburst

Judge Sid Harle threatened to declare a mistrial on Tuesday after an outburst from a sister of one of the teachers killed.

"You know who went into the fatal funnel? My sister went into the fatal funnel. Did she need a key?" the woman said in the presence of the jury.

Defense lawyers have frequently used the term "fatal funnel" to describe the danger faced by law enforcement storming into the classroom where the shooter was barricaded.

"Ya'll are saying she didn't lock her door. She went into the fatal funnel. She did it," the woman shouted.

Officers removed the woman from the courtroom and the judge instructed the jury to ignore the outburst.

After the jury left the room, Harle said, "We're trying to get this case to the jury, and these are not helping."

"If it continues, I will have no choice but to grant a mistrial," he said.

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