UVALDE, Texas – The police chief of the besieged Uvald School District was fired on Wednesday after allegations that he committed several blunders during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and teachers.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s Board of Trustees said it had voted unanimously to fire Police Chief Pete Arredondo.
Arredondo is the first officer to be fired due to law enforcement’s hesitant and sensitive reaction to one of the worst school shootings in US history. Only one other officer – Lieutenant Mariano Vargas of the Uvald Police Department, who was the acting city police chief on the day of the massacre – is known to have been placed on leave for his actions during the shooting.
Arredondo, who has been on leave from the area since June 22, has faced sharp criticism since the May 24 massacre, most notably not ordering officers to immediately breach the classroom where the attack was carried out by an 18-year-old gunman. Colonel Steve Macro, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo was responsible for the law enforcement response to the attack.
This is an urgent news update. The previous story for the Associated Press follows below.
Ovaldi, Texas (Associated Press) – Angry calls to fire a beleaguered Yuvaldi school police chief swept a auditorium Wednesday as school board members faced demands to make Pete Arredondo the first officer to lose his job over the lagging response to the massacre at Robb Elementary School.
The school board was meeting to decide Arredondo’s future, three months after the day a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in one of the deadliest classroom shootings in US history.
Arredondo was not present but through his attorney issued a sharp and defiant 17-page letter criticizing state officials, defending the police response to the May 24 massacre and accusing the school board of endangering his safety by not allowing him to carry a gun to the meeting.
When the council met in closed session, some in the hall shouted “Coward!” and “What about our children?”
Arredondo, who has been on administrative leave since June, came under the greatest scrutiny for his actions during the May 24 tragedy. State police and a damning investigative report in July criticized the police chief of the nearly 4,000-student school district for failing to take charge of the scene, not breaching the classroom sooner and wasting time searching for a potential open door key.
But a letter released by his attorney, George Hyde, accused the school district of not preparing for an attacker and described the actions taken by Arendondo and hundreds of other officers at the scene as “reasonable.”
Heavily armed law enforcement agents arrived at the school within minutes of the attack, but police did not penetrate the classroom and confronted the gunman for more than an hour.
Hyde wrote: “Chief Arredondo is a brave commander and officer who should be celebrated with all other law enforcement officers who responded to the spectacle, in order to save lives, rather than discredit those who were unable to reach them in time.”
Ovaldi School officials are under increasing pressure from the victims’ families and community members, many of whom have called for the end of Arredondo. Superintendent Hal Harrell first moved to fire Arredondo in July, but postponed the decision at the request of the chief’s attorney.
Only one police officer at the scene is known to be Lieutenant Mariano Vargas of the Uvaldi Police, who has been on leave since the shooting. Vargas was the city’s acting police chief during the massacre.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 soldiers at the scene, also launched an internal investigation into the state police response.
School officials said the campus at Robb Elementary School will no longer be used. Instead, universities elsewhere in Yuvaldi will serve as temporary classes for primary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in person after the shooting.
School officials say a virtual academy will be offered to students. The district did not say how many students will attend by default, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving distance education to “10% of all students enrolled in a particular school system.”
Schools can request a waiver for overstaying, but Ovaldi has not, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
New measures to improve Ovaldi’s school safety include an “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fence” on elementary, middle, and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for area staff and improved communications.
However, according to district progress reports, as of Tuesday, no fences had been erected at six of the eight planned campuses, and cameras had only been installed at the high school. Some progress has been made with locking on three of the eight campuses, and improved connectivity has been flagged as half complete for each campus.
Uvalde CISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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