While visiting her best friend’s memorial, a fourth-grade survivor of the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed two teachers and 19 students, nearly died of cardiac arrest.
Last week, Illiana Trevio, 11, was taken to the hospital after her heart rate skyrocketed after dropping off a teddy bear and flowers at 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza’s memorial in the hopes of preventing her from being bullied.
‘Amerie would protect Illiana from bullies and always came to her aid,’ the little girl’s mother, Jessica Treviño, shared in a Go Fund Me page to raise funds for medical bills. ‘Her heart can’t take the stress and trauma of this past week,’ she wrote.
‘We are barely seeing the ripples side effects of what this tragic incident has brought to our community,’ her mother added in the fundraising, also mentioning that Illiana was sent to Children’s Methodist Hospital in San Antonio – an hour-and-a-half drive from Uvalde.
Illiana still remains at the hospital, as of Thursday. Her mother said that the 11-year-old never experienced heart issues before the incident, according to People.
‘I think it’s just from a wounded heart that we need to focus on healing,’ Jessica Treviño, 40, told People. ‘Everything just broke her in half, and she feels the fear of being bullied again,’ she further told the magazine.
The mother also revealed on Illiana’s Go Fund Me page that ‘the medication that she’s been given is not working’ and that physicians’ biggest worry is that the incidence reproduces again. They are also warning the family that Illiana is showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress from the trauma she underwent.
‘Her body was really shutting down entirely. It couldn’t take it,’ Jessica explains. ‘Her body was basically reacting to the shock.’
Illiana came out of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary unharmed after the gunman had not attacked her classroom. According to the victim’s grandmother, Berlinda Arreola, Amerie was shot dead when she attempted to call 911 from her cell phone.
Illiana learned of Amerie’s death after seeing her best friend’s face on the news, where she was listed as one of the 21 victims, 19 of whom were minors.
The broken-hearted girl’s mother told People, ‘She just started screaming and crying.’ “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I told her. “There are some uglinesses in the universe.”