The Uvalde school district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo is facing tough questions over the handling of the law enforcement response to last week’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in the Texas town, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered by teen gunman Salvador Ramos.
Ramos snuck into the school by an unlocked rear door and barricaded himself inside a classroom for over an hour, in which time he picked off his victims, some of whom used their phones to call 911 pleading for help while officers gathered outside the room awaiting the order to intervene.
A video subsequently posted on Facebook showed distraught parents breaking through yellow police tape and demanding officers enter the building while another on YouTube showed a father having to be restrained and a woman crying: “Why let the children die? There’s shooting in there.”
Eventually, US Border Patrol agents arrived, kicked down the door and shot Ramos dead.
Criticism has fallen on Mr Arredondo, 50, from aggrieved members of the community, not least the families of the deceased, over the apparent decision to downgrade the incident from an “active shooter” situation to a “barricaded suspect” standoff, without which more might have been done to prevent the carnage.
At a press conference on Friday, Colonel Steven McCraw, Texas Department of Public Safety director, said of the call not to confront Ramos earlier: “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that.”
The US Department of Justice duly announced on Sunday that it would be reviewing the law enforcement response to the tragedy.
Mr Arredondo is now reportedly under police protection at his home, while Texas state investigators review the incident, and has declined all media requests for comment.
He recently won election to Uvalde city council and had been due to be sworn in on Tuesday but that will not now happen because the meeting in question has been cancelled out of respect for the families of Amerie Jo Garza and Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, both 10, who were amongst the slain and whose funerals are being held.
“Our focus on Tuesday is on our families who lost loved ones,” city mayor Don McLaughlin said on Monday. “We begin burying our children tomorrow, the innocent victims of last week’s murders at Robb Elementary School. The special city council meeting will not take place as scheduled.”
Mayor McLaughlin also took the opportunity to stand up for Mr Arredondo, adding: “There is nothing in the City Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office. To our knowledge, we are currently not aware of any investigation of Mr Arredondo.”
Also expressing support for the police chief, arguing that he was being unfairly scapegoated, was a fellow officer who had been at the scene and was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying: “It’s a lie that Arrendondo told everyone to stand down. It’s a lie. And we’re all getting death threats. It’s a f***ing nightmare.”
An example of that vitriol was reported by The New York Post, who quoted Mr Arrendondo’s neighbour, Lydia Torres, as saying: “Pete Arredondo is a coward. He didn’t do his job. He failed the children.
“I do not understand why the police from Uvalde, Texas, are guarding Pete Arredondo’s home. He is hiding in his home, requesting the police department patrol the area and guard his home day and night. He should come out and speak up.”
According to the school district, Mr Arrendondo has had a near three decade career in law enforcement, starting out as a 911 dispatcher.
He later served as a captain at a school district police department in Laredo, Texas, and in multiple roles within the Uvalde force before being appointed by the school’s board of trustees to lead the department in 2020.
Superintendent Hal Harrell expressed enthusiasm for the appointment in a Facebook post at the time, according to CNN, stating that he was “confident with our selection and impressed with [Mr Arrendondo’s] experience, knowledge, and community involvement”.
The appointee himself told The Uvalde Leader-News that he was proud to take the job in his hometown and said he wanted to place an emphasis on education and training.
”We can never have enough training,” he told the newspaper.
As recently as March, Mr Arrendondo posted on Facebook that his department was hosting “Active Shooter Training” at Uvalde High School in an effort to prepare local officers for “any situation that may arise” and teach them to “stop the killing”.
