Former Uvalde Police Chief Charged Over Response

AUstin, Texas — The former Uvalde schools police chief has been indicted for his role in the slow police response to the 2022 massacre at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, a the local sheriff said Thursday.

Pete Arredondo was indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of child endangerment/abandonment and briefly incarcerated in the county jail before being released on bond, Uvalde Sheriff Ruben Nolasco told the Associated Press in a text message Thursday evening.

The Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported that former school officer Adrian Gonzales was also indicted on several similar charges. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment.

Mitchell did not respond to phone and email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Several family members of the shooting victims did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

The charges make Arredondo, who was the on-scene commander during the attack, and Gonzales the first officers to face criminal charges in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. A scathing report by Texas lawmakers who reviewed the police response described Gonzales as one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting began.

The indictments were kept under seal until the two men are taken into custody. It is unclear when Arredondo's indictment will be made public.

More than two years ago, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom, where he remained for more than 70 minutes before police attacked and shot him dead. A total of 376 law enforcement officers gathered at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, some waiting in the hallway outside the classroom, even as the gunman could be heard shooting with an AR-15 type rifle inside.

“Today is another day in an incredibly painful journey,” state Rep. Joe Moody, who helped lead the state lawmakers’ investigation, posted on the social media platform X. “It may give them some sense of closure in this process rather than prolonged suffering.”

The office of a former Arredondo lawyer said it did not know whether the former leader had a new representative. The AP could not immediately find a phone number to reach Gonzales.

Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the Justice Department and state lawmakers have accused law enforcement of botching its response to the massacre.

The question of whether any officers will be prosecuted for their actions in Uvalde has remained unresolved in the city of 15,000 since the Texas Rangers completed their investigation and turned over their findings to prosecutors.

Mitchell's office has also come under scrutiny. Uvalde city officials filed a lawsuit in 2022, accusing prosecutors of failing to be transparent and hiding documents related to the shooting. Media outlets, including the AP, also sued Uvalde officials for withholding documents requested under public information laws.

But body camera footage, journalist investigations and damning government reports revealed how, for more than an hour, a crowd of police entered and exited the school, guns drawn, but did not enter in the classroom where the shooting took place. The hundreds of officers at the scene included state troopers, Uvalde police, school officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

In their July 2022 report, Texas lawmakers criticized law enforcement at all levels for failing to “prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.” The Justice Department released its own report in January that detailed “cascading failures” by police who waited far too long to confront the shooter, acted without “urgency” in establishing a command post, and communicated inaccurate information to grieving families.

Uvalde remains divided between residents who say they want to move past the tragedy and others who still want answers and accountability. In the first mayoral race since the shooting, residents voted for a man who had been mayor more than a decade ago, against a mother who had called for stricter gun laws after her daughter was killed in the attack.

Robb Elementary School is now permanently closed. The city has started construction on a new school in October 2023.