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'I Placed Myself Under His Lifeless Body': Parkland Survivor Details School Shooting Experience At Kavanaugh Hearing

WASHINGTON (CBSMiami/CNN) -- Parkland school survivor Aalayah Eastmond detailed her experience during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre at Friday's confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Eastmond is "concerned since learning Brett Kavanaugh's views on guns", and outlined in detail what happened on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

"We heard a round of extremely loud pops," Eastmond recalled.

Her first thought was that it was a senior prank until she saw "red on the floor." She began smelling and inhaling smoke and gun powder, and then one of her classmates fell in front of her.

"I then placed myself underneath his lifeless body," she said.

It was the body of Nicholas Dworet.

 

 

"Placing his arm across my body and my head underneath his back. Bullets continued flying. I kept my eyes on the ground so I knew when to hold my breath and close my eyes when the shooter got near."

Eastmond also spoke about the phone calls she made to her parents.

"I immediately called my mom. I told her my last goodbye, and I told her how much I loved her. I apologized for all the things I might've done in my lifetime to upset her, and the phone hung up. I then called my father, I told him how much I loved him, I told him to tell my brothers I love them, and I said my last goodbyes," she testified.

She went on to talk about emerging from the school and finding a friend and her mom. "They called the police over, and they began picking body matter from my hair."

She also mentioned the controversy earlier in the week when Fred Guttenberg, the father of Jaime Guttenberg who died in the shooting, accused Kavanaugh of ignoring him as he tried to shake his hand.

"If Kavanaugh doesn't even have the decency to shake hands with a father of a victim, he definitely won't have the decency to make life changing decisions that affect real people," Eastmond said.

Sources close to Kavanaugh pushed back saying the nominee had no idea who Fred Guttenberg was and that security intervened to end the exchange.

Kavanaugh is not in hearing room Friday but has testified that violence in schools is something we all "detest"

Democrats have pushed him on an opinion he wrote in 2011 on gun control.

Kavanaugh dissented from a majority opinion of the DC Circuit that upheld a ban that applied to semiautomatic rifles in the District of Columbia. He relied on Supreme Court precedent and wrote that the Court had held that "handguns -- the vast majority of which today are semi-automatic -- are constitutionally protected because they have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens."

During his testimony he acknowledged that people "passionately disagree" with the Supreme Court's precedent. But that as a lower court judge "I'm following all the precedent."

He said that in his opinion he explained in "painstaking detail" why he thought the test he applied in the case was appropriate. And he said that the Supreme Court opinion -- "allowed a lot of gun regulation, machine guns can be banned" he said as well as laws prohibiting possession by the people with mental illness and in government buildings and schools.

He spoke about growing up in the Washington, DC, area that has been "plagued by, in the '70s and '80s, plagued by gang and gun, drug violence, and it's known for a while as the murder capital of the world. "

Eastmond advised Senators: "As you consider what to do and who to appoint to make and keep us safer from gun violence, remember my story."

(©2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company, contributed to this report.)

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