‘Very indignant’: Uvalde locals grapple with college chief’s role

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — The blame for an excruciating delay in killing the gunman at a Texas elementary college — even as mother and father outdoors begged police to rush in and panicked kids called 911 from inside — has been placed with the college 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 native lawman after the director of state police stated that the commander on the scene — Pete Arredondo — made the “unsuitable determination” final week to not breach a classroom at Robb Elementary Faculty sooner, believing the gunman was barricaded inside and youngsters weren’t at risk.

Steven McCraw, the top of the Texas Division of Public Security, stated at the Friday news convention that after following the gunman into the constructing, officers waited over an hour to breach the classroom. Nineteen youngsters and two academics have been killed within 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, however Mayor Don McLaughlin stated in an announcement Monday that the meeting wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not the swearing-in would happen privately or at a later date.

“Pete Arredondo was duly elected to the Metropolis Council,” McLaughlin stated within the statement. “There may be nothing in the City Constitution, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office.”

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

When Arredondo was a boy, Maria Gonzalez used to drive him and her children to the same college where the shooting occurred. “He was a very good boy,” she said.

“He dropped the ball perhaps as a result of he didn't have enough expertise. Who knows? People are very offended,” Gonzalez stated.

One other lady within the neighborhood where Arredondo grew up began sobbing when requested about him. The girl, who didn’t need to give her identify, mentioned one of her granddaughters was on the college during the shooting however wasn’t damage.

Juan Torres, a U.S. Army veteran who was visibly upset with reviews popping out in regards to the response, said he knew Arredondo from highschool.

“You enroll to respond to these kinds of conditions” Torres mentioned. “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 Metropolis Council, Arredondo advised the Uvalde Leader-News earlier this month that he was “able to hit the bottom working.”

“I have loads of concepts, and I positively have loads of drive,” he said, including he wished to focus not only on the city being fiscally accountable but also making sure avenue repairs and beautification initiatives occur.

At a candidates’ forum before his election, Arredondo said: “I assume to me nothing is difficult. All the pieces has a solution. That resolution begins with communication. Communication is vital.”

McCraw mentioned Friday that minutes after the gunman entered the college, metropolis police officers entered via the identical door. Over the course of greater than an hour, regulation enforcement from multiple agencies arrived on the scene. Finally, officers mentioned, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team used a janitor’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman.

McCraw stated that students and academics had repeatedly begged 911 operators for assist whereas Arredondo told more than a dozen officers to attend in a hallway. That directive — which works against established active-shooter protocols — prompted questions about whether more lives had been lost as a result of officers didn’t act faster.

Two regulation enforcement officers have mentioned that because the gunman fired at students, law enforcement officers from different companies urged Arredondo to allow them to transfer in because youngsters had been in peril, The officers spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they'd not been approved to talk publicly in regards to the investigation.

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

Arredondo began out his career in regulation enforcement working for the Uvalde Police Division. After spending 16 years there, he went to Laredo, a border metropolis positioned 130 miles (209 kilometers) miles to the south, where he worked on the Webb County Sheriff’s Workplace and then for a neighborhood college district, in keeping with a 2020 article within the Uvalde Leader-Information on his return to his hometown to take the college district police chief job. The varsity district’s board of trustees accepted his appointment to the spot.

In accordance with the Uvalde school district’s website, the police force led by Arredondo also has five other officers and a security guard.

Ray Garner, the police chief of the district in Laredo where Arredondo labored, advised the San Antonio Specific-Information in a narrative published after the Uvalde shooting that when Arredondo labored within the Laredo district he was “straightforward to speak to” and was concerned in regards to the students.

“He was an excellent officer down right here,” Garner advised the newspaper . “Down right here, we do lots of coaching on active-shooter scenarios, and he was concerned in these.”

Arredondo, who spoke solely briefly at two brief news conferences on the day of the shooting, appeared behind state officials talking at information conferences over the subsequent two days, but was not current at McCraw’s Friday information convention.

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

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

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

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

He said one family told him that a first responder told them that their child, who was shot within the again, probably bled out. “So, absolutely, these errors could have led to the passing away of these youngsters as nicely,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez mentioned while the issue of which law enforcement agency had or ought to have had operational control is a “vital” concern of his, he’s also “recommended” to McCraw “that it’s not honest to place it on the local (faculty district) cop.”

“On the end of the day, everyone failed here,” Gutierrez said.

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Related Press writer Stengle contributed from Dallas, and in addition contributing have 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