CNN’s Rosa Flores met Erika Contreras at the family reunification center at MacArthur Elementary School in El Paso. This is her story:
Contreras was at Walmart yesterday shopping for groceries and school supplies with her 7-year-old daughter and her 70-year-old mother when she said she heard what sounded like clapping.
When a large crowd of people started running towards them, the three generations of the Contreras family found themselves running for their lives. Beyond the rush of people, Contreras said she saw a man holding a gun and wearing protective gear for his ears.
“You could see people on the floor that had gotten hit,” Contreras said.
Contreras said she grabbed her daughter and mother and ran out of the back of the store. Her young daughter couldn’t stop crying when they got home.
“She couldn’t breathe. She was hyperventilating. She was crying and crying,” Contreras said.
After a restless night, Contreras said she and her family went to church this morning. Talking about her faith brought her to tears.
After church, she went back to another Walmart in town. Contreras said she was sweating, shaking, anxious and constantly looking behind her back, but she built up the courage to finish shopping for her daughter’s school supplies.
“We have to continue,” she cried.
Contreras said she was at the reunification center on Sunday to ask about retrieving her car from the Walmart parking lot. But she says authorities told her her car was part of a crime scene, and it was unclear when she would get it back.
For now, Contreras said she can’t stop thinking about how her daughter is supposed to start second grade at MacArthur Elementary in a few days, after having survived a massacre.
“I’m praying to God that she can overcome it,” she said.