Indictment says former police chief’s response to Uvalde shooting endangered 10 students who survived

The former chief, Pete Arredondo, was among the first police officials to respond to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

In a 30-page indictment released Friday, prosecutors in Uvalde laid out 10 counts of child endangerment against former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was among the first senior-ranking police officials to respond to the Robb Elementary School shooting.

The indictment accuses him of placing 10 children who survived the shooting in imminent danger by failing to heed training and giving directions that delayed the police response.

The May 22, 2022 shooting, left 19 children and two teachers dead before Border Patrol agents killed the shooter.

The alleged failures by Arredondo include not identifying the situation as an active shooting after hearing shots fired and learning that a teacher and students had been wounded — Arredondo instead called for a SWAT team and ordered officers to evacuate a wing of the school — and not setting up a command center or enacting a response plan, which the indictment said paralyzed the response as law enforcement officers from local to federal agencies arrived at the school with no direction.

Arredondo also failed to determine if the door to one of the classrooms where children remained with the shooter was locked and failed to “timely” provide keys and breaching tools to get into the classrooms, according to the indictment.

The indictment calls Arredondo the designated incident commander at the scene; shortly after the shooting Arredondo said he did not consider himself the incident commander and that he never gave any orders. The indictment alleges that Arredondo decided to delay a breach until other classrooms were evacuated.

Hundreds of law enforcement waited 77 minutes before the Border Patrol team rushed the room where the shooter was located and ended the standoff.

The indictment of former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales was not immediately released Friday morning. He is believed to have also been charged with child endangerment.

A grand jury returned the indictments six months after being convened and more than two years after the massacre. District Attorney Christina Mitchel said Friday that she had no comment.

Since the shooting, reviews by the state and federal government identified an assortment of failures in leadership, communication and training that resulted in children becoming trapped with the gunman for more than an hour.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!