Off-Duty Border Patrol Agent Raced To TX School After Text From Wife

UVALDE, TX — A Border Patrol agent with a wife who works as a teacher and a daughter who is a student at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, revealed details about how he responded to last week's shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers during an appearance on NBC's "The Today Show" on Tuesday morning.

Jacob Albarado was off duty and getting a haircut at a nearby barbershop just before the May 24 shooting when he received texts from his wife, fourth-grade teacher Trisha Albarado, telling him there was an active shooter and asking for help.

Albarado and the barber raced to the school "a few blocks away." Albarado borrowed the barber's shotgun and law enforcement officers recognized him and allowed him to run into the area, he said.

"As I was going in, I could just see kids coming out of the windows and kids coming my way," Albarado said. "I was just helping all the kids get out."

Albarado said throughout this time, he didn't hear gunshots and was unsure if the gunman was still in the school.

Later, Trisha Albarado contacted Jacob to let him know she had made it out and was at a funeral home across the street, he said.

With a heavy police presence and students evacuated in the area of the school in which the shooting occurred, Albarado then went to help his second-grade daughter, Jada, in another wing. He found her and helped evacuate her and others in that area of the school, Albarado said.

"When I saw my daughter, it was a big relief," Albarado said. "All her friends, I could just see their faces, half of them fine, the other ones panicking and crying. ... I was trying to keep them as calm as I could as they were evacuating."

Law enforcement officers are facing criticism after it was revealed they didn't enter the classroom where the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, had barricaded himself until around an hour after the shooting began. There were 19 officers in the building but none of them attempted to enter the classroom until a tactical team led by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents entered the classroom and shot Ramos in an exchange of gunfire.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw admitted the commander on scene, Pete Arredondo, chief of the school district police, made the "wrong decision" in hindsight.

Ramos crashed his vehicle near the school at 11:28 a.m. and entered the building through a back door at 11:40 a.m. The tactical unit didn't confront and eventually kill him until 12:50 p.m.

Parents and onlookers urgently told police to enter the school and confront the shooter while officers kept them from entering the school.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Sunday it was conducting a critical incident review into law enforcement officials' response to the shooting.

Albarado said he believed "everyone there was doing the best that they could given the circumstances."

The shooting has shaken Uvalde, a heavily Hispanic community of around 15,000 people located 85 miles west of San Antonio.

"They're suffering," Albarado said. "They're trying their best to get through, but it's hard."