Courtesy of Christopher Salazar
Jose Flores grinned huge and held up an honor roll certificates as he posed throughout a tutorial ceremony on Tuesday morning. The fourth-grader at Robb Elementary College in Texas was carrying a blue T-shirt within the picture, which was snapped hours earlier than a youngster with a semi-automatic rifle entered his classroom and gunned down little children.
That shirt, one relative instructed The Each day Beast, was later used to determine his physique.
Jose’s uncle, Christopher Salazar, says that he and the boy’s father looked for hours for his 10-year-old nephew after the bloodbath on the Uvalde faculty. Alyssa, Jose’s mom and Salazar’s sister, was away on a piece journey when the taking pictures claimed the lives of 19 college students and two academics and chaos unfolded within the tight-knit neighborhood. Jose was Alyssa’s oldest youngster.
When the boy’s father, Jose Sr., and Salazar have been lastly knowledgeable the kid was useless, authorities strongly suggested them to not see the physique, Salazar says.
“We couldn’t maintain him or hug him or nothing,” Salazar stated. “They stated it was too ugly. His physique was supposedly torn to items. The one approach they recognized him was due to his garments and a scar on his left foot.” (In an interview with CNN, Jose Sr. stated that a Texas Ranger instructed him, “As a father, I wouldn’t allow you to return there and see him, as a result of he was not recognizable.”)
Earlier that day, Salazar stated, Jose’s dad obtained a photograph from the varsity of the glory roll occasion. The daddy didn’t know the ceremony was going down, so he didn’t go.
However as soon as the dad received phrase that photographs have been fired at his son’s faculty, he left work and rushed to the constructing. “They didn’t allow us to go in,” Salazar stated of the police.
Now Salazar is questioning whether or not cops responded to the scene rapidly sufficient—particularly in gentle of newly launched video displaying mother and father desperately pleading with officers to take motion because the mass taking pictures passed off inside for about 40 minutes.
Javier Cazares, the daddy of Jacklyn Cazares, who died within the assault, instructed the Related Press that he and different mother and father wished to cost into the constructing. “Let’s simply rush in as a result of the cops aren’t doing something like they're presupposed to. Extra might have been achieved,” he stated. He added of native legislation enforcement: “They have been unprepared.”
Salazar agrees, telling The Each day Beast, “There was plenty of failure.”
“They didn’t wish to go in there,” Salazar stated of the police. “Me, if that man was nonetheless alive, I'd have went in and received him myself.”
“The police from Uvalde have been standing approach within the again, as an alternative of standing nearer, just like the Border Patrol and SWAT staff. The cops from right here in Uvalde have been standing again like they didn’t know what to do.”
“As an alternative of being in entrance and being for the youngsters, they weren’t,” Salazar added. “I'm sort of indignant. If I noticed any person with a gun going into Robb, I'd have tried to do one thing.”
Angeli Rose Gomez, who has two sons at Robb Elementary College, drove 40 miles to the varsity after listening to in regards to the taking pictures. She instructed the Wall Avenue Journal, “The police have been doing nothing.”
Gomez stated she and different mother and father on the scene demanded officers do one thing, and that federal marshals quickly put her in handcuffs, saying she was interfering in an energetic investigation. She says she was uncuffed after persuading native Uvalde cops she knew to let her go and ran in the direction of the varsity, jumped a fence, and raced inside to rescue her children. “She sprinted out of the varsity with them,” the Journal reported.
The scene was chaotic, Gomez added, and he or she witnessed one dad tackled by cops and one other father pepper-sprayed.
Like different households whose children have been lacking in wake of the taking pictures, Salazar and Jose Sr. searched frantically for hours, driving from the varsity to the civic heart to the native hospital.
Authorities approached Jose’s dad and requested him to name a member of the family or somebody who might be with him earlier than they shared some info. In response to Salazar, detectives initially instructed Jose Sr. that his son was nonetheless alive.
“They lastly instructed him, ‘Look, are you OK to listen to what I've to inform you? No, he didn't make it,’” Salazar recalled.
“They lied to him. They wished some members of the family to consolation him whereas they instructed him his son was gone already,” Salazar stated. “I received into an argument with the cops in there. I stated, ‘I don’t care should you lock me up or no matter. You lied to him. Telling him he’s alive, he’s alright…’”
The household is now making ready for a funeral for Jose, nicknamed “Child Jose,” who leaves behind two youthful siblings. Salazar instructed The Each day Beast on Thursday that he was making ready to choose up Jose’s mom Alyssa from the airport.
Salazar remembers Jose as a candy boy who performed baseball, cherished fishing, and consuming sizzling wings, sizzling Cheetos, and slushies. He talked about desirous to be a police officer sometime. And, maybe uncommon for teenagers his age, he cherished cleansing.
“He used to return to my home, he’d begin cleansing, and I used to be like, ‘What are you doing?’ He goes, ‘I’m bored. I’m cleansing.’” Jose additionally cherished being on Tik Tok and enjoying music.
The day earlier than the taking pictures, Jose requested to name his mother.
“We known as his mother as a result of she was working. We received a maintain of my sister. And he was like, ‘Mommy, I need you to return house.’ I believe he knew what was going to occur or one thing. He had a sense. He goes, ‘Mommy, once you come house I wish to dwell with you endlessly.’”
If Salazar ever teased Jose’s mother, the boy would scold his uncle.
“He was like, ‘That’s my mommy, don’t be like that.’ He even stated he would shield his mother all the best way. He was actual sentimental.”