After the state’s lieutenant governor accused cops of dishonesty, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, retaliated against charges that local law enforcement lied about their early response to last week’s horrific school shooting.
Mayor Don McLaughlin told KHOU-TV on Monday that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s claims that he was “not told the truth” are false. ‘The relatives of the victims are entitled to answers, and the truth will be revealed.’
‘If there are holes, or we made a mistake, I want to be as candid as we can,’ the mayor said, adding that he has urged the US Department of Justice to undertake its own inquiry into the killing and police reaction.
McLaughlin was responding after Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was the incident commander during last week’s massacre at Robb Elementary, came under fire for apparently ordering cops to wait an hour before charging in to confront the barricaded shooter.
Gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos, 18, was shot dead by police after killing 19 young children and two teachers on May 24 — but in a series of press conferences last week, state officials delivered conflicting and evolving accounts of the initial police response.
Governor Greg Abbott initially praised the ‘amazing courage’ of cops who responded to the shooting, before it emerged that local police delayed in engaging the gunman before a Border Patrol team countermanded Arredondo’s orders and stormed inside.
Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, admitted at a Friday news conference that after following the gunman into the building, officers waited over an hour to breach the classroom, calling it ‘the wrong decision’.
Patrick told Fox News on Saturday that cops deciding not to immediately confront the shooter was a ‘bad decision, and that decision cost lives.’
‘I take this personally, and I know the governor takes it personally. And for me, it’s 140 or 150 people killed in Texas in the last six or seven years of collective anger when we’re not told the truth,’ he said.
McLaughlin himself appeared to acknowledge that he had received bad information in the initial aftermath of the shooting, speaking at a Friday briefing seated next to Abbott.
‘I’ve been just as confused as you are, I got the same information that the governor got until yesterday, and I was blown away,’ McLaughlin said.
NYU cultural journalism professor Susie Linfield recently wrote about the debate over releasing photos of shooting victims
Meanwhile, a debate has been renewed about whether graphic images of the bodies of young school shooting victims should be shared with the public in a bid to spur action on gun control laws.
‘In the case of Uvalde, a serious case can be made — indeed, I agree with it — that the nation should see exactly how an assault rifle pulverizes the body of a 10-year-old,’ wrote NYU cultural journalism professor Susie Linfield in a New York Times guest essay.
Linfield noted that former Obama administration Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had made a similar case in a recent interview, comparing the situation to the notorious lynching of 14-year-old black boy Emmett Till.
A photo of Till’s disfigured body in an open casket funeral spurred national outrage in 1955, and he posthumously became an iconic figure of the civil rights movement.
After the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, there were similar calls to display images of the victims’ bodies — but the families of the slain children furiously opposed the move as an invasion of privacy in their time of grief.
Ultimately, the Sandy Hook families helped pass a law in Connecticut that prohibits the public disclosure of photos or images of homicide victims.
Though images of the Uvalde victims are unlikely to ever be published, their wounds are believed to be extensive, and many of the slain children had to be identified by DNA matches.
On Monday, the first two funeral visitations were held for the victims in Uvalde.
The gathering for 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza was at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, directly across from the grade school where the children, along with two teachers, were shot to death last week before the gunman himself was killed.
Visitation for another 10-year-old, Maite Rodriguez, was at the town’s other funeral home.
This week alone, funerals are planned for 11 children and teacher Irma Garcia.
On Monday, some mourners at Amerie´s visitation wore lilac or lavender shades of purple – Amerie´s favorites – at the request of her father, Angel Garza. Many carried in flowers, including purple ones.
The little girl who loved to draw had just received a cellphone for her 10th birthday. One of her friends told Angel Garza that Amerie tried to use the phone to call police during the assault on her fourth-grade classroom.
Among the mourners at Amerie’s visitation were some of Maite’s relatives. Like many people, they were attending both.
Maite’s family wore green tie-dye shirts with an illustration showing Maite with angel wings. Before going into the funeral home, they stopped at the ditch to see the metal gate the shooter crashed a pickup truck into before crossing a field and entering the school.
‘How did he walk for so long?’ asked Juana Magaña, Maite’s aunt.
Meanwhile blame for an excruciating delay in killing the gunman has been placed with the school district’s homegrown police chief, Arredondo.
Arredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from high school here, was set to be sworn in Tuesday to his new spot on the City Council after being elected earlier this month, but Mayor McLaughlin said in a statement Monday that wouldn’t happen.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the swearing-in would happen privately or at a later date.
‘Pete Arredondo was duly elected to the City Council,’ McLaughlin said in the statement. ‘There is nothing in the City Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office.’
The 50-year-old Arredondo has spent much of a nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the head police job at the school district.
When Arredondo was a boy, Maria Gonzalez used to drive him and her children to the same school where the shooting happened. ‘He was a good boy,’ she said.
He dropped the ball maybe because he did not have enough experience. Who knows? People are very angry,’ Gonzalez said.
Another woman in the neighborhood where Arredondo grew up began sobbing when asked about him. The woman, who didn’t want to give her name, said one of her granddaughters was at the school during the shooting but wasn’t hurt.
Juan Torres, a U.S. Army veteran who was visibly upset with reports coming out about the response, said he knew Arredondo from high school.
‘You sign up to respond to those kinds of situations’ Torres said. ‘If you are scared, then don´t be a police officer. Go flip burgers.’
After his election to the City Council, Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News earlier this month that he was ‘ready to hit the ground running.’
‘I have plenty of ideas, and I definitely have plenty of drive,’ he said, adding he wanted to focus not only on the city being fiscally responsible but also making sure street repairs and beautification projects happen.
At a candidates’ forum before his election, Arredondo said: ‘I guess to me nothing is complicated. Everything has a solution. That solution starts with communication. Communication is key.’