The Miami Police Department is recognizing students for doing the right thing in a stressful situation.
Every month, around 900 students get nominated from all over Miami-Dade County, and about 10 get awarded.
Anthony Gonzalez and Freddy Salazar, two students at Euginia B. Thomas K-8 Center, were honored for seeing something and saying something.
The two elementary school students said they feel like superheroes.
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“I feel great,” said Salazar. “I feel happy. I felt proud of myself.”
He and Gonzalez were honored for bringing attention to an alarming situation in the classroom.
“I don’t want to get other people like me in danger,“ said Gonzales. “I didn’t want anybody to be in danger so I told the teacher.”
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Back on Oct. 10, one of their classmates brought a loaded gun to school. Salazar and Gonzalez immediately told the teacher.
“One of them told me, I came up to him, and then he showed me,” said Salazar. “Then he was pretending to be sick to get out of school, that way he wouldn’t get caught, that’s when Anthony and me had the chance to tell the substitute.”
Gonzalez says it was a scary moment.
“I was very scared and I was nervous if he was gonna do something,” he said. “One girl was going to cry, girls were scared and boys were scared.”
The kids say their teacher handled it and took the bag with the gun to the main office and they called police.
The executive director of the Do The Right Thing program, Ariadna Espinosa, says it is crucial to recognize students that go above and beyond.
“Especially in the current circumstances that we live in, with the schools system,” she said. “Where they're taking, they're stepping up, they're reporting what their seeing, following the see something say something campaign, they're reporting dangerous activity on campus”
