‘Very angry’: 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 school — even as mother and father outdoors begged police to rush in and panicked children referred to as 911 from inside — has been placed with the school district’s homegrown police chief.

It’s left residents within the small metropolis of Uvalde struggling to reconcile what they know of the well-liked local lawman after the director of state police said that the commander at the scene — Pete Arredondo — made the “fallacious resolution” final week to not breach a classroom at Robb Elementary Faculty sooner, believing the gunman was barricaded inside and children weren’t at risk.

Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said on the Friday information convention that after following the gunman into the building, officers waited over an hour to breach the classroom. Nineteen youngsters and two teachers were killed in the taking pictures.

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

“Pete Arredondo was duly elected to the Metropolis Council,” McLaughlin said in the statement. “There's nothing in the Metropolis Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office.”

The 50-year-old Arredondo has spent a lot of an almost 30-year career in legislation enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the top police job at the school district.

When Arredondo was a boy, Maria Gonzalez used to drive him and her kids to the same faculty where the shooting occurred. “He was boy,” she mentioned.

“He dropped the ball perhaps as a result of he didn't have sufficient experience. Who knows? Persons are very angry,” Gonzalez said.

One other woman within the neighborhood the place Arredondo grew up began sobbing when requested about him. The woman, who didn’t want to give her title, said one of her granddaughters was on the school in the course of the taking pictures but wasn’t damage.

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

“You sign up to respond to those kinds of situations” Torres said. “In case you are scared, then don’t be a police officer. Go flip burgers.”

After his election to the non-salaried spot on the City Council, Arredondo informed the Uvalde Chief-Information earlier this month that he was “ready to hit the bottom running.”

“I have loads of ideas, and I positively have loads of drive,” he mentioned, including he needed to focus not only on the city being fiscally responsible but in addition ensuring road repairs and beautification projects happen.

At a candidates’ discussion board earlier than his election, Arredondo said: “I assume to me nothing is complicated. The whole lot has a solution. That solution begins with communication. Communication is essential.”

McCraw stated Friday that minutes after the gunman entered the varsity, metropolis police officers entered through the identical door. Over the course of more than an hour, legislation enforcement from a number of companies arrived on the scene. Finally, officers mentioned, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical group used a janitor’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman.

McCraw mentioned that college students and teachers had repeatedly begged 911 operators for assist whereas Arredondo told more than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway. That directive — which works towards established active-shooter protocols — prompted questions on whether or not more lives had been lost because officers didn’t act quicker.

Two legislation enforcement officers have stated that as the gunman fired at students, legislation enforcement officers from other businesses urged Arredondo to allow them to transfer in because children were at risk, The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as a result of they had not been licensed to talk publicly about the investigation.

McLaughlin, the Uvalde mayor, pushed again on officials’ claims, together with remarks made over the weekend by Texas’ lieutenant governor, that they weren’t instructed the reality concerning the massacre. McLaughlin mentioned in his Monday assertion that native law enforcement hadn’t made any public comments about the investigation’s specifics or misled anybody.

Arredondo started out his profession in regulation enforcement working for the Uvalde Police Department. After spending 16 years there, he went to Laredo, a border metropolis situated 130 miles (209 kilometers) miles to the south, the place he labored at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office and then for a neighborhood school district, in response to a 2020 article within the Uvalde Leader-News on his return to his hometown to take the college district police chief job. The college district’s board of trustees approved his appointment to the spot.

In line with the Uvalde school district’s web site, the police power led by Arredondo also has 5 other officers and a security guard.

Ray Garner, the police chief of the district in Laredo where Arredondo worked, informed the San Antonio Categorical-News in a narrative printed after the Uvalde taking pictures that when Arredondo labored in the Laredo district he was “straightforward to talk to” and was concerned about the college students.

“He was a superb officer down right here,” Garner instructed the newspaper . “Down right here, we do a lot of training on active-shooter eventualities, and he was concerned in those.”

Arredondo, who spoke solely briefly at two short news conferences on the day of the shooting, appeared behind state officials speaking at news conferences over the next two days, however was not current at McCraw’s Friday information convention.

After that information conference, members of the media converged at Arredondo’s residence and police cruisers took up posts there. At one point, a man answering the door at Arredondo’s house informed a reporter for The Related Press that Arredondo was “indisposed.”

“The reality will come out,” stated the man before closing the door.

On Tuesday, Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Division of Public Safety, said Arredondo had not responded to DPS interview requests for 2 days, Considine said.

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

He mentioned one family informed him that a first responder advised them that their child, who was shot within the again, probably bled out. “So, completely, these errors could have led to the passing away of those youngsters as well,” Gutierrez stated.

Gutierrez mentioned while the difficulty of which law enforcement company had or should have had operational control is a “significant” concern of his, he’s additionally “instructed” to McCraw “that it’s not fair to place it on the local (faculty district) cop.”

“At the finish of the day, all people failed here,” Gutierrez stated.

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Associated Press writer Stengle contributed from Dallas, and likewise contributing had 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 shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/school-shootings