AUG 2022. Blues Vol 38 No. 8.

cousin Eli.”
“We don’t know what we will
do when it comes to school
time, because she won’t go to
the bathroom by herself,” Flores
said.
Asked what options they’re
considering, he paused.
“That’s a tough question,” he
said. “One thing that nobody
talked about at the board meeting,
and everybody wants an
answer, but nobody really asks
is: Are we truly safe anywhere
anymore?”
Staff writer Jamie Landers in
Dallas contributed to this report.
Reprinted from the Dallas
Morning News
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text from his wife, who had just
been shot and told her husband
she “was dying.”
Flores stared at the school,
encircled by a 5-foot fence,
the same one he used to climb
over in drills when he disguised
himself as an intruder to keep
staff on their toes — just like the
shooter had done that morning,
entering the school through an
unlocked door.
After his drills, Flores would
write reports for the principal,
specifying how many doors were
unlocked and making recommendations.
He would share the
information on Facebook to alert
the community, especially parents.
“A culture of complacency
weakens those safeguards,” he
said.
Flores stared at what he described
as a “chaotic scene.”
He offered his former police
colleagues help but “I was told
‘everything is under control.’ And
then I saw them pull a couple of
bodies out of the school, and I
knew nothing was under control.
Everything was in such chaos. It
was bad.”
As the situation deteriorated,
“one of my nephews ran toward
me and said, ‘Eli has been
shot.’“And I just, it was … so
difficult. ... Still is. I just wished I
had been in there.”
Eli’s uncle and legal guardian,
Al Salinas, 54, has heard the
talk in town about how things
might have been different under
Flores. He knows Flores. Salinas
is married to one of Melissa’s
older sisters, making him a “concuño,
brother-in-law,” he said.
And he’s seen the videos, too,
with law enforcement members
standing around, paralyzed.
Salinas isn’t convinced.
“It’s easy for him in a conversation
to tell me that he would
have done this, and he would
have done that, but he didn’t
have actual live rounds shot at
him,” he said. “No one did their
job. We’ll never know.”
Flores agrees that it’s wasted
time to second-guess. It’s time
to move forward, he said, and
prepare for the next mass shooting.
This week, he wrote to the
school board and offered to be
part of a committee to look into
what happened at Robb and
come up with informed suggestions
on how to prevent another
mass shooting.
“I asked not as someone who
wants to be a cop again, because
I know that’s not going
to happen, but as a concerned
parent,” he said.
His eldest child, Leo, 18, who
was a school classmate of the
shooter, just graduated from
high school. His second son, Jett,
14, is entering high school, and
his youngest, Unica Alicia, 9,
hasn’t slept in her bedroom since
the shooting. She’s moved into
her parents’ room “to sleep at
night, feel safe. She misses her
46 The BLUES The BLUES 47