Dad: Teen son wanted half sister dead
by Sheryl Kornman on Aug. 14, 2008, under Local, SpecialShelden Pruitt, 15, charged in 14-year-old’s death
Pruitt
Shelden Andrew Pruitt’s fatal shooting of his half sister Alexandra Salinas, 14, was not an accident, the teens’ father said Wednesday.
Pruitt, 15, told deputies he thought the gun wasn’t loaded.
But Roland Salinas – Alexandra and Shelden Pruitt’s biological father – said, “He chose. The decision he made was to take my daughter’s life. I think he totally hated her,” Salinas said.
“He hated her because she had everything, and he had nothing.”
Pruitt told authorities he was trying to scare his sister. A court document written by a sheriff’s deputy said he told investigators he was angry because he wanted to use a telephone and she wouldn’t let him.
In an interview Wednesday with the Tucson Citizen, Salinas said the teens had their own cell phones, so it didn’t make sense for them to argue over using the family’s land line.
He said the teen tried to kill himself earlier this summer, saying he wanted his mother to pay attention to him.
Salinas said Pruitt’s mother had threatened to turn him over to the Colorado foster care system, telling him she was giving up on taking care of him.
Pruitt, who will be tried as an adult in the case, came to Tucson to live with his father and stepmother, Abby Wagner, about three weeks before the shooting.
He had never lived with his father, but spent a month last summer visiting his family here, Salinas said.
Salinas is a registered nurse who works in critical care. He said he has seen plenty of tragedy in his career but that did not prepare him for his own.
His wife has not been able to return to their home since the shooting, he said.
Salinas and his wife were celebrating their anniversary and were at the theater. Their 2-year-old and 9-year-old children were at home. The 9-year-old ran across the street to a neighbor for help, Salinas said.
He spoke about the killing moments after his son’s arraignment in Pima County Superior Court on Wednesday on a second-degree murder indictment. Pruitt pleaded not guilty; a case management hearing is set for Oct. 1.
Salinas sat through the arraignment with a color photo of Alexandra pinned to his lapel. Pruitt’s maternal grandmother sat next to Pruitt. Pruitt did not look at his father. He is living with the maternal grandmother outside Pima County, free on $50,000 bond, until his trial. No trial date has been set.
Just three days before Alexandra Salinas was killed on July 26, Pruitt’s mother told his father that a gun was missing from her Colorado home.
Salinas said they searched for the gun at the family’s Corona de Tucson home and did not find it. “But we found some cigarettes he’d hidden from us,” he said.
In the days after the shooting, the Vail school superintendent announced that students came forward to say Pruitt had brought a knife and gun to school the day before, and showed them to his friends.
The students didn’t tell anyone about the weapons.
Court documents show Pruitt said he stole the gun from his stepfather in Colorado and brought it to Tucson.
Salinas said Pruitt’s mother lives “in crisis mode” with “four or five children” and through several marriages. She married someone else while pregnant with Pruitt.
She and Salinas were never married, he said. Shelden was the product of “a brief relationship. I didn’t know her very long.” Salinas said he didn’t know she was pregnant with Shelden until after the boy was born and she asked for a DNA test.
Salinas said he started a relationship with Shelden about 2 1/2 years ago.
Salinas said he paid child support for years and Pruitt’s life seemed stable with his stepfather and his mother until they divorced in 2006 or 2007, and she remarried in 2008.
Earlier this summer, Pruitt took an overdose of liquid Tylenol with codeine and made some superficial cuts on his wrists, Salinas said.
“He told us he needed his mother’s attention,” he said.
The teen was placed in an “acute intervention center” in Colorado for three days and then returned to his mother, Salinas said. It was then she decided she didn’t want him and said she would place him in foster care or let him live with his father in Tucson, Salinas said.
Salinas said the teen had visited here for a month last summer and “there were no problems.”
Pruitt was on medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he said, but had not been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder.
Shortly after Pruitt came to Tucson this summer, Salinas took him to the family physician for a thorough check-up.
“He didn’t see a psychiatric or psychological issue. I trusted him. He’s our family physician,” Salinas said.
