Indictment says Uvalde schools’ ex-police chief delayed as shooter was ‘hunting’ children
The police chief for schools in Uvalde, Texas, failed to identify an active shooting, did not follow his training and made critical decisions that slowed the law enforcement response to stop a gunman who was “hunting” victims and ultimately killed 21 people at Robb Elementary, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
Pete Arredondo was arrested Thursday and briefly booked into Uvalde County Jail before he was released that night on 10 state jail felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child during the May 24, 2022, attack that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Former school Officer Adrian Gonzales was also indicted on 29 similar charges. He was booked into jail Friday, and released on bond, but his indictment hadn’t been made public as of Friday afternoon.
Arredondo and Gonzales are the first officers to be criminally charged for the police response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. The indictments from a Uvalde County grand jury follow two years of calls from some victims’ families and others for such action.
“We began to lose faith in the system. We are happy this has taken place,” said Jesse Rizo, whose niece Jacklyn Cazares was among the students killed.
Rizo added that he would like to see more officers charged.
“They decided to indict only two. That’s hard for me to accept,” Rizo said.
It was unclear Friday whether the grand jury had considered indictments against any others.
The names and stories of those killed in the Texas school shooting are emerging as the stunned community of Uvalde tries to cope with Tuesday’s attack.
The first U.S. law enforcement officer ever tried on allegations of failing to act during a shooting on a school campus was a campus sheriff’s deputy in Parkland, Fla., who didn’t go into the classroom building and confront the perpetrator of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.
The Parkland deputy, who was fired, was acquitted of felony neglect last year. A lawsuit by the victims’ families and survivors is pending.
In a statement, an attorney for former Officer Gonzales called the charges against law enforcement “unprecedented in the state of Texas.”
“Mr. Gonzales’ position is he did not violate school district policy or state law,” said Nico LaHood, former district attorney for Bexar County, which includes San Antonio.
The indictment against Arredondo, the on-site commander during the shooting, accused the chief of delaying the police response despite hearing gunshots and being notified that injured children were in the classrooms and that a teacher had been shot. Arredondo called for a SWAT team, ordered the initial responding officers to leave the building, and attempted to negotiate with the 18-year-old gunman, the indictment said.
Police in Texas admit mistakes in the handling of a gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 children, at Robb Elementary School.
“After being advised that a child or children were injured in a class at Robb Elementary School [Arredondo] failed to identify the incident as an active shooter incident and failed to respond as trained to an active shooter incident and instead directed law enforcement officers to evacuate the wing before confronting the shooter thereby delaying the response by law enforcement officers to an active shooter who was hunting and shooting a child or children,” the indictment said.
Arredondo’s actions and inactions amounted to “criminal negligence,” the indictment said.
More than 370 federal, state and local officers converged on Robb Elementary that day, but they waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the shooter, even as the gunman could be heard firing an AR-15-style rifle. Terrified students inside a classroom called 911 as agonized parents begged officers — some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway — to go in and stop the attack. A tactical team of officers eventually entered the classroom and killed the shooter.
The indictment also charges Arredondo with failing to protect survivors of the attack, including Khloie Torres, who had called 911 and begged for help, telling a dispatcher, “Please hurry. There’s a lot of dead bodies. Some of my teachers are still alive but they’re shot.”
The charges could result in up to two years in jail. Arredondo does not have a listed phone number and the court clerk had no record of an attorney for him.
In an interview with the Texas Tribune two weeks after the shooting, Arredondo said he had taken the steps he thought would best protect the lives of students and teachers.
“My mind was to get there as fast as possible, eliminate any threats, and protect the students and staff,” he told the newspaper.
Since then, scathing state and federal investigative reports on the police response have cataloged “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology.
A report says nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting that left 21 people dead at an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school.
Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and state lawmakers supported allegations that law enforcement had botched its response to the massacre.
Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, said the investigation should not stop with the indictments against the two school officers. Gutierrez has been critical of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the head of the agency, Steve McCraw, who testified before the grand jury in February.
“Every single officer that stood down that day must be held accountable,” the senator said. We can’t rest until we have justice.”
Vertuno writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.
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