Salinas said that when he and Deputy Chief Ricardo Rios arrived at Rob Elementary School on May 24, he had a portable radio that broadcast traffic from the Texas Security Department. He could not hear the radio traffic from the Uwalde Police Department or the Uwalde School Police Department.
He said he helped evacuate children from some classrooms and then helped clean up other rooms.
Asked by CNN if there was anyone in charge of the scene, Salinas said: “I’ve never heard anyone say they’re responsible.”
Pedro “Pete” Aredondo, the head of the school police in Uwalde, identified by other officials as the commander of the scene, recently gave his first extensive public comment in an interview with the Texas Tribune.
Speaking on the phone, written answers and in statements provided by his lawyer George E. Hyde, Aredondo said he did not consider himself the commander of the incident and did not instruct officers to refrain from entering the scene.
“I have not issued any orders,” Aredondo told the Tribune, who said the chief had instructed officers to start breaking the outside windows of other classrooms and begin evacuating students. “I called for help and asked for a retrieval tool to open the door to one of the classrooms where the shooting took place,” he said.
The police response to the shooting, which killed 19 students and two teachers, has been sharply criticized since the tragedy, which is the second deadliest shooting at a K-12 school in the United States.
Salinas and Rios arrived around noon, about 30 minutes after the first call to 911 reported that a man was shooting in front of the school. They found a chaotic scene on the southeast side of the building, although authorities had established a perimeter around the school.
The sheriff said a man he thought was an out-of-duty border patrol agent had asked him to help rescue children from four or five classrooms, so he, Rios and another law enforcement officer included.
After the students were taken out, Salinas said he approached the building where the shooter locked himself in a room. The windows of the building are broken and the awnings are hanging, he added. The sheriff will later learn that Joe Vazquez, one of his deputies, who is out of work, was in the building and was part of the makeshift team that killed the shooter.
The sheriff said he had never heard gunshots.
“All I heard was ‘He’s down.’ He is down, “he said.
Salinas entered the school, where the corridor was “cloudy and foggy.” According to him, many people were on the floor receiving first aid.
An agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told him they needed help, so he followed the agent and helped inspect the rooms to make sure there were no other threats and the wounded received help.
Salinas said he remembers a particularly young child who underwent CPR while on a stretcher. He does not know if the child survived.
Salinas told CNN he had given statements to the Texas Rangers, the lead agency investigating the shooting, and the FBI. He was not asked to testify before a Texas commission investigating the shooting or the U.S. Department of Justice, he said.
The next hearing is scheduled for Monday in Uwalde and members of the Uwalde police department are expected to testify.
When commission chairman Dustin Burroughs was asked by the media if Aredondo would also testify on Monday, he told the press: “Not yet.”
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