Chainkeen|Ex-Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo indicted over deadly shooting

UVALDE,Chainkeen Texas — A grand jury in Texas indicted former Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo over the police response to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and two teachers, authorities said on Thursday.

The Uvalde County Sheriff's office said Arredondo was in custody Thursday, where family members and parents of several victims of the shooting gathered, and was being booked on 10 counts of child endangerment.

The officials identified Arredondo, whose name has been at the center of the police failures, and Adrian Gonzales, who also worked as a school police officer, as the other police officer indicted by the grand jury. Gonzales' role has been less public in the two years and one month since the shooting.

The officers face charges of injury to a child by omission, according to the two officials with knowledge of the developments who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are sealed.

Additionally, Sid Harle, a visiting Uvalde County district judge confirmed to the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, that he had set bonds for two people in cases in which the original judge recused herself. He declined to comment further because of the pending matter.

The indictments culminate a six-month grand jury investigation that included months of in-person testimony, including from Texas Department of Public Safety director Col. Steve McCraw in late February. The officers face up to two years behind bars and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the state jail felony charges.

Arredondo accused of leading botched police response

Law enforcement response to the Robb Elementary attack – the worst school shooting in Texas history – has drawn national scrutiny, with Arredondo centerstage of the criticism.

Days after the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw identified Arredondo as the incident commander and said he mistakenly treated the attacker as a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter, which requires immediate action to stop the gunman. Later, in testimony before a state Senate panel, McCraw said Arredondo "decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."

The Justice Department report released in January also blamed Arredondo for failing to properly assume incident command, resulting in several issues, including a 77-minute delay in reaching the victims.

The Uvalde school board unanimously voted to fire Arredondo three months after the shooting, who maintained that he appropriately responded to the attack.

"Any allegation of lack of leadership is wholly misplaced," Arredondo's attorney said in a statement on the day of the board's vote. "The complaint that an officer should have rushed the door, believed to be locked, to open it up without a shield capable of stopping an AR-15 bullet, without breaching tools … is tantamount to suicide."

State investigators have found that the door was never locked and that there was no evidence any officer tried opening the door. Hallway video obtained by the American-Statesman showed the first of several officers arriving with at least one ballistic shield 19 minutes after the gunman arrived at the school.

Indictments follow years of national scrutiny over police response

The charges follow two years of intense pressure among the families of many of the victims, who have repeatedly demanded accountability. They also come after a damning U.S. Department of Justice report in January that cited “cascading failures” in the botched law enforcement response.

"As a consequence of failed leadership, training, and policies, 33 students and three of their teachers — many of whom had been shot — were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour as law enforcement officials remained outside," the report concluded.

The indictments also contrast the initial false narrative of police heroism that authorities first provided. In the initial aftermath, officials said more children would have died had responding officers not acted more quickly — a story that fell apart over later weeks and months, and was completely dismantled when the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV obtained a 77-minute video of the breakdown.

The cases mark the second and third times nationally that a law enforcement officer faced charges for failing to act during an on-campus shooting. Last year, a jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson of child neglect and other charges for failing to confront a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who killed 17 people.

He was the only armed school resource officer on campus when that 2018 shooting started. Legal experts said the case, had it resulted in a guilty verdict, could have set a precedent by more clearly defining the legal responsibilities of police officers during mass shootings.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell could not immediately be reached for comment. She has cited the ongoing grand jury investigation for not releasing investigative information sought by victims’ families and news organizations.

Contributing: Niki Griswold, Luz Moreno-Lozano, and Katie Hall, Austin American-Statesman; Reuters