Three children from Uvalde, Texas, are being recognized Monday for their heroic actions during the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Amerie Jo Garza, 10, tried to call 911 before she was fatally shot during the attack that left 21 people dead. She was with her best friend, Khloie Torres, who used their teacher’s phone to call the police, according to CBS News.
Miah Cerrillo also called 911 after covering herself in blood and pretending to be dead. Torres and Cerrillo, both fourth graders at the time of the massacre, survived the shooting, which was carried out by 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos.
Garza, Torres and Cerrillo are set to be honored with the 9-1-1 Youth Hero Award during a conference Monday in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine.
“To bring these kids on stage and to give them an award and to pat them on the back and tell them that what they did was honorable, what they did was courageous, it goes a long way,” Tim Brown, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and the 9-1-1 For Kids international chairman, told ABC News in a report Monday.
“When you look at what these young ladies have done, I don’t think any athlete or any regular person could ever think of themselves as a hero after what these kids have gone through … If you want to call anybody a hero going forward, you should start with these young ladies.”
May 24 marked the one year since 19 students and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary. The response by law enforcement that day continues to garner widespread criticism, as nearly 400 officials responded to the scene but took more than an hour to confront and kill Ramos.