Arredondo is the first officer to lose his job following one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.
UVALDE, Texas — The Uvalde school district has fired police chief Pete Arredondo under mounting pressure in the grieving Texas town to punish officers for hesitating for over an hour to storm a classroom and take down the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers
The board faced withering criticism, with one young girl approaching a microphone to to ask why law enforcement hadn’t protected her friends and teachers. “Turn in your badge,” she demanded. Most notably, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack.Minutes before the school board meeting got underway, Arredondo’s attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief’s fullest defense to date of his actions.
At the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school.Shirley Zamora, the mother of a student at Robb Elementary, said accountability shouldn’t end with Arredondo’s dismissal.Only one other officer — Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for their actions during the shooting.
School officials have said the Robb Elementary campus will no longer be used when students return Sept 6. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting.
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