‘Very indignant’: Uvalde locals grapple with school chief’s role

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — The blame for an excruciating delay in killing the gunman at a Texas elementary faculty — even as mother and father outdoors begged police to hurry in and panicked children called 911 from inside — has been placed with the college district’s homegrown police chief.

It’s left residents in the small city of Uvalde struggling to reconcile what they know of the favored local lawman after the director of state police stated that the commander on the scene — Pete Arredondo — made the “mistaken choice” last week not to breach a classroom at Robb Elementary School sooner, believing the gunman was barricaded inside and youngsters weren’t in danger.

Steven McCraw, the top of the Texas Department of Public Safety, stated at the Friday news conference that after following the gunman into the building, officers waited over an hour to breach the classroom. Nineteen youngsters and two lecturers had been killed in the taking pictures.

Arredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from highschool here, was set to be sworn in Tuesday to his new spot on the City Council after being elected earlier this month, however Mayor Don McLaughlin stated in a statement Monday that the assembly wouldn’t occur. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the swearing-in would occur privately or at a later date.

“Pete Arredondo was duly elected to the City Council,” McLaughlin said in the assertion. “There is nothing within the Metropolis Constitution, Election Code, or Texas Structure that prohibits him from taking the oath of office.”

The 50-year-old Arredondo has spent a lot of a nearly 30-year career in regulation enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the head police job on the faculty district.

When Arredondo was a boy, Maria Gonzalez used to drive him and her children to the identical faculty where the shooting happened. “He was a superb boy,” she mentioned.

“He dropped the ball perhaps because he did not have enough experience. Who knows? Persons are very angry,” Gonzalez mentioned.

One other girl in the neighborhood the place Arredondo grew up began sobbing when requested about him. The lady, who didn’t want to give her identify, stated one in every of her granddaughters was on the faculty during the taking pictures however wasn’t damage.

Juan Torres, a U.S. Military veteran who was visibly upset with studies popping out in regards to the response, mentioned he knew Arredondo from highschool.

“You enroll to reply to those sorts of conditions” Torres stated. “If you're scared, then don’t be a police officer. Go flip burgers.”

After his election to the non-salaried spot on the Metropolis Council, Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News earlier this month that he was “ready to hit the bottom running.”

“I have loads of concepts, and I positively have plenty of drive,” he said, including he wanted to focus not solely on the town being fiscally accountable but in addition ensuring avenue repairs and beautification projects occur.

At a candidates’ discussion board earlier than his election, Arredondo stated: “I guess to me nothing is difficult. The whole lot has a solution. That answer begins with communication. Communication is vital.”

McCraw stated Friday that minutes after the gunman entered the school, metropolis police officers entered via the identical door. Over the course of more than an hour, regulation enforcement from multiple businesses arrived on the scene. Lastly, officers said, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical workforce used a janitor’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman.

McCraw stated that college students and academics had repeatedly begged 911 operators for assist whereas Arredondo advised greater than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway. That directive — which works in opposition to established active-shooter protocols — prompted questions about whether or not extra lives were misplaced as a result of officers didn’t act faster.

Two legislation enforcement officers have stated that as the gunman fired at college students, law enforcement officers from different businesses urged Arredondo to let them move in because youngsters had been in peril, The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because that they had not been approved to speak publicly about the investigation.

McLaughlin, the Uvalde mayor, pushed back on officials’ claims, together with remarks made over the weekend by Texas’ lieutenant governor, that they weren’t advised the reality concerning the massacre. McLaughlin said in his Monday assertion that native legislation enforcement hadn’t made any public feedback concerning the investigation’s specifics or misled anyone.

Arredondo began out his career in legislation enforcement working for the Uvalde Police Division. After spending 16 years there, he went to Laredo, a border city positioned 130 miles (209 kilometers) miles to the south, where he labored at the Webb County Sheriff’s Workplace after which for a local school district, according to a 2020 article within the Uvalde Chief-News on his return to his hometown to take the varsity district police chief job. The varsity district’s board of trustees accredited his appointment to the spot.

According to the Uvalde faculty district’s web site, the police power led by Arredondo also has five other officers and a safety guard.

Ray Garner, the police chief of the district in Laredo where Arredondo labored, advised the San Antonio Specific-Information in a story revealed after the Uvalde capturing that when Arredondo labored in the Laredo district he was “simple to talk to” and was concerned concerning the college students.

“He was a wonderful officer down here,” Garner instructed the newspaper . “Down here, we do numerous coaching on active-shooter situations, and he was concerned in these.”

Arredondo, who spoke only briefly at two brief information conferences on the day of the capturing, appeared behind state officers talking at news conferences over the subsequent two days, however was not current at McCraw’s Friday information convention.

After that information conference, members of the media converged at Arredondo’s dwelling and police cruisers took up posts there. At one point, a person answering the door at Arredondo’s home instructed a reporter for The Associated Press that Arredondo was “indisposed.”

“The truth will come out,” stated the person earlier than closing the door.

On Tuesday, Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety, stated Arredondo had not responded to DPS interview requests for two days, Considine mentioned.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district contains Uvalde, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he’s asking lots of questions after “so many things went improper.”

He stated one family advised him that a first responder informed them that their youngster, who was shot in the back, likely bled out. “So, completely, these errors might have led to the passing away of these youngsters as effectively,” Gutierrez mentioned.

Gutierrez mentioned while the difficulty of which law enforcement company had or should have had operational management is a “vital” concern of his, he’s additionally “prompt” to McCraw “that it’s not honest to put it on the native (faculty district) cop.”

“On the finish of the day, everyone failed right here,” Gutierrez mentioned.

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Associated Press writer Stengle contributed from Dallas, and also contributing have been Curt Anderson in Miami, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Mike Balsamo in Washington and Elliott Spagat in Uvalde.

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More on the varsity taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/school-shootings