Doctor Describes ‘Pulverized,’ ‘Decapitated’ Bodies From Robb Elementary School in Horrific House Hearing on Gun Reform

Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician from Uvalde, Texas, told a House committee hearing on Wednesday of the absolute horror he witnessed in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers.

Guerrero told the House, how he rushed to the hospital on May 24th and added, “I know I’ll never forget what I saw that day.” Guerrero pleaded with the members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform during a hearing on gun violence to step up and finally do their job to protect the nation’s children from mass shootings.

“My name is Dr. Roy Guerrero. I’m a board-certified pediatrician and was present at Uvalde hospital the day of the massacre at Robb Elementary School. I was called here today as a witness but I showed up because I am a doctor, because how many years ago I swore an oath, an oath to do no harm,” he began, adding:

After witnessing firsthand the carnage in my hometown of Uvalde, to stay silent would have betrayed that oath, and inaction is harm, delay is harm. So here I am. Not to plead, not to beg or convince you of anything, but to do my job and hope that by doing so would inspire the members of this House to do theirs. I have lived in Uvalde my whole life, in fact, I attended Robb Elementary School myself as a kid.

As often is the case with us grown-ups we remember a lot of the good and not so much of the bad so I don’t recall homework or detention, I remember how much I loved going to school. What a joyful time it was. Back then we were able to run between classrooms with ease to visit our friends and I remember the way the cafeteria smelled at lunchtime on hamburger Thursdays, it was right around lunchtime on a Tuesday that a gunman entered the school without restriction, massacred 19 students and two teachers and changed the way that every student at Robb and their family remember that school forever.

I doubt they will remember the smell of the cafeteria or the laughter ringing in the hallways, instead they will be haunted by the memory of screams and bloodshed, panic and chaos, police shouting, parents wailing. I know I will never forget what I saw that day. For me that day started like any typical Tuesday in our pediatric clinic, moms calling for coughs, boogers, sports physicals, right before the summer rush. School was out in two days then summer camps would guarantee some grazes, ankle sprains, injuries that could be patched up and fixed with a Mickey Mouse band-aid.

“A colleague from a San Antonio trauma center texted me and said why are pediatric surgeons on call for a mass shooting in Uvalde,” Guerrero continued.

“I raced to the hospital to find parents outside yelling children’s names in desperation and sobbing as they begged for any news related to their child. Those mothers’ cries I will never get out of my head as I entered the chaos of the ER,” he said, adding:

The first casualty I saw was Mia Cerrillo, she was sitting in the hallway, her face was in shock but her whole body was shaking from the adrenaline.

Her white Lilo & Stitch shirt was covered in blood and her shoulder was bleeding from a shrapnel injury. Sweet Mia, I have known her my whole life. As a baby she survived major liver surgeries against all odds and once again she’s here as a survivor inspiring us with her story today and her bravery.

When I saw Mia sitting there I remembered having seen her parents outside so after quickly examining two other patients in the hallway with minor injuries I raced outside to let them know Mia was alive. I wasn’t ready for their next urgent and desperate question: ‘Where is Elena?’ Elena is Mia’s 8-year old sister who was also at Robb at the time of the shooting.

“I had heard from some of the nurses there were two dead children who had been moved to the surgical area of the hospital,” he continued.

“ As I made my way there I prayed that I wouldn’t find her. I didn’t find Alaina but I did find something no prayer will ever relieve. Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart, that the only clue of their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes clinging to them, clinging for life and finding none,” he said, describing the horror of the wounds inflicted by the shooter’s AR-15.

“I could only hope the two bodies were a tragic exception to the list of survivors but as I waited with my fellow Uvalde doctors, nurses, first responders, and hospital staff for other casualties we hoped to save, they never arrived,” he added, continuing:

All that remained was the bodies of 17 more children and the two teachers who cred for them, dedicated their careers to nurturing and respecting the awesome potential every single one just as we doctors do.

I will tell you why I became a pediatrician, because I knew that children were the best patients, they accept the situation as it’s explained to them, you don’t have to coax them into changing their lifestyles in order to get better or plead them to modify their behavior as you do with adults.

No matter how hard you try to help an adult, their path to healing is always determined by how willing they are to take action. Adults are stubborn. We are resistant to change even when the change will make things better for ourselves but especially when we think we’re immune to the fallout.

Why else would there have been such little progress made in Congress to stop gun violence. Innocent children all over the country are dead because laws and policies allows people to buy weapons before they are old enough to buy a pack of beer. They are dead because restrictions have been allowed to lapse, they are dead because there are no rules about where gun are kept because no one is paying attention to who is buying them.

The thing I can’t figure out is whether our politicians are failing us out of stubbornness, passivity or both.

I said before that as grown-ups we have a convenient habit of remembering the good and forgetting the bad. Never more so than when it comes to our guns.

Once the blood is washed away from the bodies of our loved ones and scrubbed off the floors of the schools and supermarkets and churches, the carnage from each scene is erased from our collective conscious and when return again to nostalgia. To the rose-tinted view of our second amendment as a perfect instrument of American life no matter how many lives are lost. I chose to be a pediatrician, I chose to take care of children. Keeping them safe from preventable diseases I can do. Keeping them safe from bacterial and brittle bones I can do.

But making sure our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of our politicians and leaders. In this case you are the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools, we are bleeding out and you are not there. My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job and I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours.

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC

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