Former Uvalde school police chief indicted for response to Texas mass shooting

A grand jury in Uvalde, Texas, indicted former school district police Chief Pedro Arredondo for the police response to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and two teachers, authorities announced Thursday.

The Uvalde County Sheriff's Office said Arredondo was in custody and booked on 10 counts of child endangerment.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been criticized for their lack of response to the May 24, 2022, shooting. Officers left the 18-year-old shooter alone in a classroom with children for more than a year. hour while thinking about how to confront it.

By the time police stormed in, the school had become the scene of one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.

Another law enforcement officer, Adrian Gonzales, was also indicted by the grand jury, according to local media. The Sheriff's Department said Thursday that Gonzales had not yet been booked and said it could not provide any details about his situation.

The charges against Arredondo, known as “Pete,” and Gonzales are the first criminal complaints filed against officers responding to the scene.

Uvalde County Prosecutor Christina Mitchell confirmed to the Uvalde Leader-News that Arredondo and Gonzales have been charged. She told the newspaper that more details would be provided once Gonzales was booked, which she said would be Friday.

Federal and state investigations into the school shooting have condemned the inaction of responding officers. In May, victims' families filed lawsuits against Meta, Activision Blizzard and its parent company Microsoft, as well as weapons maker Daniel Defense, for what they claim was collusion in marketing weapons to youth.

In an advisory issued earlier this week declaring that gun violence in the country constitutes a public health crisis, the U.S. surgeon general noted that it has been the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the country since 2020 .

He also noted that the gun death rate among young people in the United States is 11 times higher than in France, 36 times higher than in Germany and 121 times higher than in Japan.

Additional report from Agence France-Presse