IIliana Treviño, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School, was hospitalized with heart issues last week after visiting her best friend’s memorial, her mom told People.
Iliana was close with Amerie Jo Garza, who was among the 19 children and two teachers killed in the May 24 massacre at the Uvalde, Texas, school. Iliana was not physically harmed in the shooting, but after she visited her friend’s memorial, she told her mom she didn’t feel right.
“The hospital told me, ‘Your daughter’s going into cardiac arrest.’ And I said, ‘What?’” her mom, Jessica Treviño, told People. “Her heart [rate] skyrocketed because she couldn’t take the trauma.”
Iliana found out her friend had died when she saw her face on the news and “just started screaming and crying,” Treviño told People.
She said she believed her daughter’s condition was due to a “broken heart.”
“Her heart can’t take the stress and trauma of this past week,” she wrote in a GoFundMe raising money for hospital bills.
Amerie, who was 10 when she died, was trying to call 911 on her cellphone when the gunman shot her, her grandmother told reporters. She was posthumously awarded the Bronze Cross by the Girl Scouts for trying to save lives at the risk of her own.
“That was just the way she was. She tried to save everyone,” her grandmother, Berlinda Arreola, said at the time.
According to Treviño, Amerie would defend Iliana from bullies at school.
“Amerie made her feel safe and made her feel okay to go to school,” she said.
Iliana remains hospitalized at the Methodist Children’s Hospital in San Antonio, according to the GoFundMe page. She was in the Intensive Care Unit but has since been moved out. Doctors told Treviño she is showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress as a result of the trauma she experienced, People reported.