What 10 year old Uvalde survivor AJ Martinez wants you to know about the day he was shot
UVALDE (CBSNewsTexas) - For AJ Martinez, it feels like little time has passed.
"Makes me sad that it's been a year... that I lost my friends and teachers," said the 10 year old survivor.
AJ's class at Robb Elementary School was watching a movie this time last year, when the school went into lockdown. Outside, he heard gunshots. Then, the shooter made his way in.
"He shot the window, I think, and then he put his arm through the door and unlocked it," he remembers. "He said, 'Are you all ready to die,' and he started shooting."
It was AJ who wanted to talk about what happened that day, but it's never easy.
CBS News Texas reporter Andrea Lucia sat with AJ and his mother at a picnic table in Uvalde Memorial Park earlier this month to talk about the day of the shooting. AJ started swaying back and forth, stroking his legs. It's how he soothes himself when memories resurface.
"Yea, I just rock," he explained. "Like I have PTSD."
Two teachers and more than half of AJ's classmates died. Then there are those like AJ, who survived after spending 77 minutes trapped with the gunman.
"Toward the end, I hear officers, yelling, 'Get him, get him', and I was just running. And, I couldn't feel nothing," said AJ.
It wasn't until he reached safety he realized he was shot in the leg.
"This officer gets box cutters and cuts open my pants, and he looks at it," said AJ.
He remembered feeling scared and asking for his mother, Kassandra Martinez. She remembers being scared and asking for him.
"Nobody's giving us answers," she said. "We kept asking the officers walking past us and they were running around and they couldn't tell us nothing."
Kassandra finally caught sight of her son injured and getting moved from one bus to another.
"I'm like, 'Oh my God. There's AJ! there's AJ!'" said Kassandra. But when AJ's father ran toward him, she said he was stopped by police. "My husband's fighting six or seven cops. They had a taser," she said. "First they threw him against the car and then they threw him to the ground."
Officers told the frantic couple they needed to get the kids to the hospital. AJ, meanwhile, struggled to make sense of what had happened.
"I sat next to another survivor. She had blood on her face. I'm like, 'why do you have blood on your face?' But, I didn't want to say that, so I stayed quiet," he said.
Now AJ walks with a limp. Though, he's a sports fan, he knows it's unlikely he'll ever play on any teams. It's something he feels was taken from him.
The shooter's AR-15 fired bullets with such high velocity they broke into fragments on impact, and AJ still has pieces buried in his body.
"I just want them out," said AJ.
Once the class clown, he's now far more quiet. A different person, his mother said.
"My old son got left in that classroom. This is a new son I have."
"I don't joke around. Sometimes, I laugh, but like not joking around. Serious," AJ explained.
His parents struggle with how to help.
"There was no guide for us. Like your child is shot. Here's a book on how to deal with it. No, you don't get that kind of help. For me, it was like… What do I do? Am I doing something wrong? What do I say? How do I approach my son about this?" she said.
AJ is haunted by by nightmares about the day of the shooting.
Lately, though he's had some good dreams too.
"He was like, 'I saw them, mom. I saw them. They were all there," Kassandra said he told her one night. "He was just crying with emotion because of that."
"Like in a happy way," said AJ.
