Pete Arredondo charged over police response

Lina Portman4 days ago

0 3 minutes read

An indictment unsealed Friday accuses former Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo of mistakes that led to the botched response to an active shooter that killed 19 children and two teachers.

UVALDE, Texas — A 10-count indictment unsealed Friday accuses former Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo of 10 missteps that led to law enforcement's botched response to an active shooter that killed 19 children and two teachers in May 2022.

Authorities booked Arredondo into the county jail Thursday, where he spent about 90 minutes before being released on bond.

A grand jury also indicted Adrian Gonzales, a former school district police officer whose role has been less public in the two years and a month since the shooting. He had not been incarcerated as of Friday, and the indictment in his case remains sealed.

The indictments are the culmination of a six-month grand jury investigation that included months of in-person testimony, including that of Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steve McCraw.

The officers face up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the criminal charges in state prison.

Arredondo accused of botched police response

Law enforcement's response to the Robb Elementary attack — the worst school shooting in Texas history — has drawn national scrutiny, with Arredondo at the center of criticism.

Days after the shooting, McCraw identified Arredondo as the incident commander and said he mistakenly treated the attacker as a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter, requiring immediate action to stop the shooting. shooter.

Instead, law enforcement waited, letting the shooter continue killing children in a classroom.

Investigators later discovered that the classroom door had never been locked and there was no evidence that a police officer had tried to open the door. Three months after the shooting, the Uvalde school board voted unanimously to fire Arredondo, who maintained that he had responded appropriately to the attack.

“Any allegation of a lack of leadership is completely misplaced,” Arredondo’s lawyer said in a statement the day of the council’s vote. “The complaint that a police officer had to rush to the door, which was believed to be locked, to open it without a shield capable of stopping an AR-15 bullet, without using breakage tools …is tantamount to suicide. »

Arredondo accused of failing to act

According to charging documents unsealed Friday, Arredondo is accused of failing to act to protect survivors of the attack, including Khloie Torres, who called 911 during the attack and asked for help. It also names Samuel Salinas, who has said in interviews that he “played dead” to survive the attack.

The indictment says Arredondo “failed to respond as he had been trained to respond to an active shooter incident…thus delaying law enforcement's response to an active shooter who was hunting and shot one or more children in room 112 of Robb Elementary School. »

After being informed that children had been injured in the classroom, he ordered law enforcement to evacuate a wing of the school before confronting the 18-year-old shooter.

The indictment also accuses him of falsely trying to negotiate with the shooter and telling other officers that they should not enter the classroom until an evacuation could be made. occurred.

The indictments follow years of national scrutiny of the police response

The charges follow two years of intense pressure on the families of many of the victims, who have repeatedly demanded accountability. They also follow a damning report by the U.S. Justice Department in January that found “cascading failures” in the botched law enforcement response.

“Due to a lack of leadership, training, and policies, 33 students and three of their teachers – many of whom had been shot – were trapped in a room with an active shooter for more than an hour while law enforcement stood outside,” the report concluded.

The charges also contrast with the initial false narrative of police heroism that authorities first spread. At first, officials said more children would have died if officers had not responded more quickly — a narrative that fell apart in the weeks and months that followed and was completely dismantled when the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV obtained a 77-minute video of the incident.

This is the second and third time nationwide that a law enforcement officer has been accused of failing to act in a campus shooting. A jury last year acquitted former sheriff's deputy Scot Peterson of child neglect and other charges for failing to confront a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who killed 17 people.

He was the only armed school resource officer on campus when the shooting began in 2018. Legal experts said the case, if it had resulted in a guilty verdict, could have set a precedent by more clearly defining the legal responsibilities of police officers during mass shootings.

Uvalde County Prosecutor Christina Mitchell could not immediately be reached for comment. She cited the ongoing grand jury investigation for failing to release investigative information sought by victims' families and news organizations.

Contributor: Minnah Arshad, USA TODAY; Niki Griswold, Luz Moreno-Lozano and Katie Hall, Austin American-Statesman; Reuters

An indictment unsealed Friday accuses former Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo of mistakes that led to the botched response to an active shooter that killed 19 children and two teachers.

Arredondo accused of botched police response

Arredondo accused of failing to act

The indictments follow years of national scrutiny of the police response

Lina Portman

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