Under intense public pressure, Uvalde’s top school administrator has suggested that the district police chief be fired for his or her role in the law enforcement response that went horribly wrong when a shooter killed two teachers and 19 pupils at an elementary school about two months ago.
The South Texas city’s school board will hear about Superintendent Hal Harrell’s proposal to remove Chief Pete Arredondo at a special meeting on Saturday morning, according to a statement. State officials have charged Arredondo with making a number of crucial errors during the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24.
In the past, administrators at the school have rejected requests to remove Arredondo. The news came days after a meeting when members of the public yelled at school board members for more than three hours, accusing them of failing to install basic security at Robb, being secretive about what transpired, and failing to hold Arredondo accountable for his deeds.
Uncle of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was murdered in the shooting, Brett Cross scolded board members for not taking responsibility for the atrocity in detail. He specifically chided members for failing to realize that the school’s exit doors were closed from the outside and for keeping Arredondo on the payroll.
Cross addressed Harrell, saying, “If he’s not dismissed by noon tomorrow, I demand your resignation and every single one of these board members because you don’t give a damn about us or our kids.”
Harrell asserted on Monday that Arredondo was a contract employee and could not be fired arbitrarily in response to the vocal requests of the police chief’s parents to be sacked.
Since the shooting, Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under heavy fire, particularly for his decision to delay ordering cops to enter the classroom where the 18-year-old shooter opened fire. Arredondo, if dismissed, would be the first police officer to lose his job as a result of the bloodiest school massacre in Texas history.
Arredondo is one of just two cops who have been disciplined, despite the fact that more than 400 officers from multiple agencies participated in the police response that took more than an hour to engage and kill the gunman.
Requests for feedback from his lawyer did not immediately receive a response.
Following the publication of a devastating 80-page report by a Texas House committee that accused all levels of law enforcement of responding slowly and chaotically despite having over 400 police on the site, the chief may be fired. Arredondo is singled out in the report and accused of squandering “valuable time” during the atrocity looking for a classroom key.
The committee claims that Arredondo informed legislators that the safety of the students in other classes was his top priority and that he did not see himself as the on-scene commander in charge. That choice was referred to in the committee report as a “sad, awful blunder.”
However, the committee observed that “In the course of its investigation, the Committee did not uncover any other “villains” save the attacker. No one is capable of harboring animosity or ulterior objectives. Instead, we discovered egregiously bad decision-making and systemic flaws.”
Arredondo is seen in the corridor attempting various sets of keys on other classroom doors, but not the one where the atrocity occurred, according to body camera footage released by Uvalde officials. There is no evidence that cops attempted to open the classroom door while the shooter was inside since the door could not be closed from the inside.
“Our thought was: ‘If he comes out, you know, you eliminate the threat,’ correct?” Arredondo told the committee, according to the report. “And just the thought of other children being in other classrooms, my thought was: ‘We can’t let him come back out. If he comes back out, we take him out, or we eliminate the threat.’”
The majority of Arredondo’s nearly 30-year career in police enforcement took place in Uvalde, where he was raised. He accepted the position of chief of police for the school district in 2020 and was sworn in as a council member on May 31 in a ceremony that was held behind closed doors. On July 2, he resigned from his council position.