Javier Cazares raced to his daughter's school when he heard there was a shooting, leaving his truck running with the door open as he ran into the schoolyard. In his rush, he didn't bring his gun.
Nineteen children and two teachttps://www.nbcdfw.com/tag/uvalde-school-shooting/hers were ultimately shot dead in the roughly 80 minutes the gunman spent inside the school in Uvalde, Texas.
LOOKING FOR HIS 'FIRECRACKER'
Cazares isn't sure exactly when he arrived on the scene, but when he did, he saw about five officers helping people escape. He kept a close watch to see if his 9-year-old "firecracker," Jacklyn was among them.
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About 15 to 20 minutes after he got to the school, he said he spotted officers arriving with heavy shields for the first time.
In the chaos, he felt that time was both "going so fast and it was going so slow."
But he added: "From what I saw, things could have been a lot different."
PARENTS GROW AGITATED OUTSIDE ROBB ELEMENTARY
He spent the next agonizing minutes scanning the children fleeing Robb Elementary School for Jacklyn. All the while, he yearned to run in himself -- and grew increasingly agitated, along with other parents, that the police weren't doing more to stop the teenage gunman who holed up in a classroom, killing kids.
"A lot of us were arguing with the police, `You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs,"' said Cazares, an Army veteran. "We were ready to go to work and rush in."
WAITING FOR WORD AT THE HOSPITAL
Cazares left school before officers killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. He rushed to the hospital because his niece said she'd seen Jacklyn in an ambulance.
The entire family soon gathered there, pressing hospital staff for information for nearly three hours. Finally, a pastor, police officer and a doctor met with them.
"My wife asked the question, 'Is she alive or is she passed?"' Cazares said. "They were like,'No, she's gone."'
When he was finally able to see his daughter's body, Cazares vowed that her death would not be in vain.
Later, he fought back tears as he pondered his daughter's last moments.
"She could be feisty," he said. "It kind of comforts our hearts that she would be one of the ones that was brave and tried to help as much as she could."
Cazares, a gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment, said he shies away from politics -- but added that he thinks there should be stricter gun laws, including better background checks. He called selling the type of gun the assailant used to an 18-year-old "kind of ridiculous."
