Uvalde man describes how he had to identify the bodies of slain children and his high school friend: 'It's a picture that's going to stay in my head forever'

• Following the Texas school shooting, Eulalio Diaz Jr. was called in to serve as the county coroner.
• He described how he went "room by room" identifying dead children.

A Uvalde man who stood in as the county's coroner following last Tuesday's Texas school shooting has shared his experience of identifying the bodies of dead children and his high school friend.

Eulalio Diaz Jr. spoke to NPR about his duties as the county's Justice of the Peace that day, which included assuming the role of the county coroner as Uvalde does not have its own medical examiner's office.

Diaz told NPR that what he saw would haunt him for life.

"It was my luck ... my bad luck," he told the outlet. "But I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

Of the 19 children killed in the shooting, Diaz said he knew "probably three-quarters of the kids' families or their grandparents," per the outlet. He also knew the two teachers who were fatally shot.

Per NPR, Diaz described how he tried to steel himself while waiting for help from the Bexar County Medical Examiner in San Antonio. "For two hours, I sat there, preparing myself and getting ready for the scene we're about to see ... because you know it's going to be a tough scene," he said.

It was only when he entered the school that he saw the damage done to the children's bodies. "So when we got there, there were children in four rooms – the initial two rooms plus two other rooms," Diaz told NPR, adding that his group went "room by room," trying to identify each person correctly.

"It's something you never want to see, and it's something you don't, you cannot prepare for. It's a picture that's going to stay in my head forever, and that's where I'd like for it to stay," he said, per the outlet.

Diaz also told NPR what it was like to see one of his high school friends, Robb Elementary teacher Irma Garcia, lying dead on the floor.

"She was one year younger than me through junior high and high school, and I knew her husband," he told the outlet, referring to Joe Garcia, who died of a heart attack several days after his wife's death. "He was a year older than me. They had been high school sweethearts. I've known them all my life."

Diaz told NPR that he plans to seek help to cope with the long-term stress and trauma of what he witnessed.

Following the shooting, families of those involved in the tragedy were asked to provide DNA swabs to help identify victims.

Last week, trauma surgeon Lillian Liao became emotional while talking to CBS News about how her team treated victims of the shooting. She also described the "high-velocity firearm injuries" caused by the gunman's weapons.

"When you talk about a child, their body surface area is much smaller than an adult, so when a projectile hits them at a high velocity, it will create a bigger destruction," she told CBS. "You can bleed to death in five minutes."

The shooting in Uvalde left at least 21 people, including 19 children, dead.