As it often is with neighbors, Liz Blalock knew Arlington Heights police officer Christian Saladino only from a friendly distance. Waves of greeting were a matter of reflex, as was her smile when she saw him outside riding bikes with his two young children. Property lines didn’t decide who cut lawns or shoveled snow, the jobs were always shared.
“He was friendly, oh yes,” Blalock recalled. “I’ve never seen him angry. He was very involved with his kids, a little boy and a little girl, always out with them when the weather was good, doing something.”
But lives often are catalogued from a distance, and those views offered little to help explain a series of events that ended in tragedy Thursday, the details of which are being closely guarded by Arlington Heights police.
With only a five-paragraph statement, police officials said that near the end of his shift Thursday afternoon, Saladino, a 37-year-old patrol officer, parked his squad car in the lot behind Village Hall and then died from what is being described as a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
But the official version is only a part of this story.
According to a source in the village government, Saladino had gone out to the Village Hall parking lot and locked himself in his parked car with the motor running. When the gun went off, Saladino’s body fell forward onto the accelerator, and the engine continued to rev, the source said. Village employees heard the motor running and when they went outside to investigate, they saw that the car was on fire.
“I saw enough to turn my stomach,” said one village employee, who did not want to be identified. The employee was outside on a cigarette break when the squad car apparently started to burn.
The employee said the inside of the car and the seat compartment was burning when public works employees rushed with fire extinguishers to quickly douse the flames. Afterward, workers were told by authorities at the scene that the officer had shot himself.
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An emergency crew transported Saladino to Northwest Community Hospital, but an official there declined to say whether the officer received any medical treatment or whether he was dead on arrival, explaining that all questions were being referred to police.
Arlingon Heights Mayor Arlene Mulder said Thursday night that she had met Saladino but didn’t know him well. She described him as “nice, quiet, one of the guys.”
Mulder said that after the incident, employees from the village and police and public works departments were called to a special meeting, where they were told what had happened.
“As employees of the village, we’re a close family, and it was an afternoon of real hurt and very solemn faces at the meeting,” she said.
Mulder said a team of psychologists would be called in to counsel the village employees.