Pete Arredondo, the former chief of the school district police in Uvalde, Texas, has been criminally charged and arrested over his actions on that day when law enforcement delayed entering the school and neutralizing the shooter.
A Uvalde County grand jury indicted Arredondo and another former district officer, Adrian Gonzales, on multiple felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child in response to their botched response to the massacre which comes 25 months after the shooter murdered 19 students and two teachers.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell impaneled a grand jury in January to determine if charges should be brought against any of the roughly 400 law enforcement officials who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, the Texas Tribune reported. Authorities were held back for nearly an hour and a half before federal Border Patrol agents stormed the classroom and killed the suspect.
The U.S. Department of Justice released a 600-page report earlier this year reviewing the failures of law enforcement’s response to the shooting.
“Chief Pete Arredondo of the UCISD Police Department (UCISD PD) directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms 111/112 in favor of searching for keys and clearing other classrooms,” the report said. “At several points, UCISD PD Chief Arredondo also attempted to negotiate with the subject. … Chief Arredondo, who became the de facto on-scene commander, was without his radios, having discarded them during his arrival, and communicated to others either verbally or via cell phone throughout the response.:
Of the hundreds of law enforcement officials who arrived at the school, many “believed that the subject had already been killed or that UCISD PD Chief Arredondo was in the room with the subject” because of poor communication of those who were in charge at the scene.
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