At a moving hearing in the US Congress, a student spoke of her traumatic experiences during the massacre at her elementary school in Texas.
Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo recounted in pre-recorded video for Wednesday's session how the gunman shot dead her teacher and several classmates in front of them.
For fear of the shooter, she smeared herself with the blood of others and calmed herself down.
She called the police with her killed teacher's cell phone and asked for help.
When asked what she would like, Miah said, "Security."
She doesn't feel safe in her school.
"I don't want it to happen again," she said.
When asked if she feared that, she answered with a nod.
"Something really needs to change"
An 18-year-old gunman shot dead 19 children and two teachers two weeks ago at an elementary school in the small Texas town of Uvalde.
The attacker holed himself up with the students and teachers in two interconnected classrooms and caused the bloodbath there.
Miah survived the attack.
Her father, Miguel Cerrillo, said in tears at the hearing in the US House of Representatives that he almost lost his child.
"She's not the same anymore." He implored congressmen to do something about the unprecedented gun violence in the US.
"Something really needs to change."
The parents of a little girl who was killed in the attack also testified via video at the hearing.
The mother reported in tears how she saw her daughter for the last time that day and left her at school.
"This decision will haunt me for the rest of my life." On behalf of her daughter, she pleaded for a tightening of gun laws.
The devastating Uvalde attack has once again fueled the debate about tightening gun laws in the United States, which are lax in many places.