The brave Border Patrol agent who stormed the Uvalde primary school with a borrowed shotgun to save his wife, daughter, and 20 other children from the active shooter stated he was only attempting to help as many people as he could, while local police were chastised for failing to act soon enough.
Jacob Albarado, a US Customs and Border Patrol agent, was having a haircut when his wife, Trisha, a teacher at Robb Elementary School, texted him that a shooting had occurred.
There’s a shooter on the loose…
‘Help…I adore you,’ read the text.
Albarado told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that he quickly borrowed his barber’s shotgun and raced to the school, where he encountered ‘complete chaos.’
‘I just saw a whole bunch of kids running out, running off campus, jumping through the windows, cops breaking windows,’ he said.
Although his wife had escaped, Albarado said he was looking for his daughter, Jayda, and assisted officers with clearing the classrooms on her floor in order to save as many lives as he could.
‘I wasn’t just trying to save my child, I was trying to get as many people out of there as I could,’ he added.
Albarado’s daughter had been locked in a bathroom and was rescued as police finally made their way inside the school where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a high school dropout and loner, who had bought the rifles he used a week before, murdered 19 children and their two teachers.
Albarado told Ingraham that the gunman had bypassed his wife’s classroom and had focused on the rooms on the other side of the same hallway.
As he worked to clear the students, Albarado said fellow Border Patrol colleagues and police were forming a tactical group to take on Ramos, who was eventually shot dead by a border patrol agent.
While the tactical group was getting ready, Albarado said he split off with others to form an evacuation group to get the students and staff out as quickly as possible.
Two officers provided cover, with their guns drawn, he told the New York Times, while two others guided the children and their teachers out on the sidewalk, many of whom emerged screaming.
Albarado said he was blessed that he was able to secure his daughter’s safety as he hugged her and quickly instructed her to keep moving as he continued to evacuate others.
He added that while the community, where he was born and raised, is heartbroken over the shooting, they are thankful for the outpour of support for Uvalde.
‘Everyone has given a helping hand,’ he told Ingraham of the businesses that have sent over food and funds for the grieving families. ‘You would never think such people would come out of the woodwork and help out.’
Albarado’s quick action and that of his colleagues stand in contrast to that of Pete Arredondo, head of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) police, who has been heavily criticized for waiting to send officers into the building to stop the gunman.
Arredondo believed that Ramos was barricaded alone inside the building, and waited over an hour before breaching the classrooms despite desperate calls from teachers and students in the school.
Investigators are trying to determine the facts surrounding the shooting, in particular, why it took so long to end Ramos’s rampage.
The Texas force opened an investigation as a matter of routine. In addition, on Sunday the federal Department of Justice announced they too were launching an inquiry.
But on Tuesday, Travis Considine, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo had stopped assisting their inquiries.
‘Uvalde and Uvalde CISD departments have been cooperating with investigators,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘The chief of the CISD did an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a follow up interview that was made two days ago.’
Despite stating that Arredondo had not replied to a follow up interview request, Considine insisted that all law enforcement departments were working together to investigate the shooting. .
‘Plenty of their personnel have done interviews and given statements to investigators, so it’s absolutely wrong to characterize both those departments as not being cooperative.’
Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety said on Friday that minutes after the gunman entered the school, city police officers entered through the same door.
Over the course of more than an hour, law enforcement from multiple agencies arrived on the scene.
Finally, officials said, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team used a janitor’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman.
McCraw said that students and teachers had repeatedly begged 911 operators for help while Arredondo told more than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway.
That directive – which goes against established active-shooter protocols – prompted questions about whether more lives were lost because officers didn’t act faster.
Two law enforcement officials have said that as the gunman fired at students, law enforcement officers from other agencies urged Arredondo to let them move in because children were in danger.
Don McLaughlin, the Uvalde mayor, pushed back on officials’ claims – including remarks made over the weekend by Texas’ lieutenant governor – that they were not told the truth about the massacre.
‘Local law enforcement has not made any public comments about the specifics of the investigation or (misled) anyone,’ he said in a Monday statement.