‘Mommy, I still have blood on my sweater’: Girl recounts deadly shooting in her classroom

Marissa Perez, 9, was in her classroom Monday morning at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino when a man walked in and opened fire.

When her mother Elisabeth Barajaz picked her up at Cajon High School, Marissa clung to her hip as they walked.

Barajaz held Marissa’s gray zip-up sweater, which had blood splatters on it, as Marissa described through tears what she saw: “The [man] just walked in with the gun. He just shot everywhere. I went under the table and then I saw a teacher run out. So I just ran out. My friend and my teacher, they got shot.”

Barajaz said she was angry at the lack of information coming from the school district. She did not know what her daughter had seen until she arrived at Cajon and her daughter ran to her and said: “Mommy, I still have blood on my sweater.”

Marissa was still wearing the sweater when her mother told her it was OK to take it off.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get through this,” she said as her daughter cried by her side. “They could have at least said, ‘Your daughter was in that classroom.’”

The shooting happened in her daughter’s special education class, which Marissa said includes students from first through fourth grade.

The teacher, Barajaz said, “was very kind. She would always tell me how Marissa was doing.”

Now Barajaz is preparing to get counseling for her daughter. But she wants to know how a man with a gun was able to open fire in her daughter’s classroom. “How did he get in there?” she asked.

Authorities said the shooting appeared to be a murder-suicide. The teacher and the shooter died along with one student. Another student was hurt.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Twitter: @palomaesquivel

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