A former police chief has been charged over the response to the 2022 Uvalde school shooting.
The Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office said Pedro ‘Pete’ Arredondo has been booked and released from jail after a grand jury indicted him on 10 counts of child endangerment on Thursday.
He was the chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) police department when a former student carried out a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Texas.
Salvador Ramos murdered 19 children – all between nine and 11 years old – and two teachers may 24th. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.
Police were heavily criticized for their response after it emerged that no one attempted to confront the 18-year-old in adjacent classrooms 111 and 112 for 77 minutes.
Arredondo was fired three months after the shooting in a unanimous vote of the UCISD board of directors.
A grand jury in Uvalde also returned an indictment against Adrian Gonzales, another officer, for the police response to the mass shooting.
The sheriff’s office was unable to provide specific details about the charges faced. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell told the Uvalde Leader-News that Gonzales will be booked on Friday.
These were the first criminal complaints filed against any of the responding officers, and Arredondo and Gonzalez were among the first to arrive at the school.
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A U.S. Department of Justice report released in January found that agents made “Critical failures” in treating Ramos as an “entrenched subject” and leaving 33 students in the classrooms with him.
“The resulting delay provided an opportunity for the active shooter to have additional time to reassess and resume his deadly actions within the classroom,” the report added.
Since January: Uvalde school shooting is a ‘series of great failures’
It also said: “More than one survivor recalled hearing someone say ‘say help if you need help,’ and when a child tried to say ‘help,’ the subject re-entered room 112 from room 111 and shot the victim.” “.
Texas Public Safety Chief Steven McCraw said in 2022 that there were enough armed police to arrest the Uvalde gunman three minutes after he entered the school.
He added that there was also a delay entering the classroom while officers searched for a key, but the door was not locked and there was no evidence that officers even checked it.
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In November of that year, CNN also published reports about a 911 call from Khloie Torres, 10who was inside the classroom during the shooting.
She said, “Please get help. I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh my God.” Khloie survived the massacre.
It comes after Relatives of victims filed lawsuits against Meta, Activision Blizzard and its parent company Microsoft, and the weapons manufacturer Daniel Defense for alleged “collusion” in the marketing of weapons among young people.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
