Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo detailed in a new interview the 77 minute delay in breaching a room at Robb Elementary School where a gunman had barricaded himself with students last month.

Arredondo has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the school shooting and has been referred to as the on-scene commander at the school, though he was unaware of this, according to James Barragan, a Texas Tribune reporter who spoke with Arredondo this week.

Joining MSNBC’s Joe Diaz-Balart on Friday, Barragan said Arredondo claims he did not give an order to not breach the room, something that has been repeatedly reported. Texas Department of Safety head Steve McCraw previously said the on-scene commander made the “wrong” call by delaying entry into the room.

“He says he was not the incident commander. He was not aware he was the incident commander, never called himself the incident commander, and never issued an order not to breach the room,” the reporter said.

In the Tribune interview, Arredondo claimed the delay in response was due to police outside the room not having keys to the door and no extraction tools.

Another decision by Arredondo that has faced a wave of criticism is the fact that he did not have his radios on him while in the school. This would be while students were actively calling 911 from inside the room where they were trapped with the shooter. More than 20 lost their lives. The room was eventually breached and the shooter was killed.

According to Barragan, Arredondo’s decision to leave behind both of his radios was a “conscious” one.

“He also says he made the conscious decision to leave his radios behind because he wanted both hands on his firearm,” he said. Arredondo further claimed that radio communications do not work in much of the elementary school.

The reporter noted that Arredondo is the first law enforcement official outside the Texas Department of Safety to put comments about that day on the record.

“Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat,” the police chief told the Tribune.

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