The former school district police chief in Uvalde, Texas, is in custody on a child endangerment price after the legislation enforcement reaction to a 2022 basic school shooting that left 21 other people lifeless, together with 19 kids, officers on the Uvalde prison mentioned Thursday afternoon.
Pete Arredondo, 52, used to be introduced in through legislation enforcement officials and is accused of forsaking and endangering a child particular person, the prison mentioned.
The price used to be first reported through the San Antonio Express-News.
The Uvalde prison showed Arredondo used to be being booked into the ability on Thursday afternoon.
Early this yr, the Justice Department launched a 600-page file that mentioned deficient coordination, coaching and execution of “active shooter” protocols a few of the Uvalde officials who replied to the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, ended in a “failure” of their reaction.
Instead of constant to interact the 18-year-old gunman — who used to be locked in a lecture room with 33 scholars and 3 lecturers — officials retreated after an preliminary burst of gunfire and didn’t “push forward immediately and continuously to eliminate the threat,” the dep. mentioned.
The officials have been taught erroneously that lively shooters — or gunmen federal government outline as anyone “actively” killing or looking to kill others — “can easily morph into a hostage crisis,” the file says.
More than 70 mins handed between the time that officials first arrived on the school and when the gunman used to be faced and killed. In addition to the nineteen scholars, two lecturers have been fatally shot and 17 others have been injured.
State lawmakers in Texas prior to now got here to a equivalent conclusion because the Justice Department, with a 2022 file that mentioned the legislation enforcement and school district reaction used to be plagued through “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”
Arredondo, described within the Justice Department’s file because the scene’s de facto commander, used to be a few of the officials to have confronted administrative punishment over the reaction.
Arredondo used to be fired through Uvalde’s school board final yr. At the time, his attorney described the previous chief as a sufferer of the shooting and mentioned his firing used to be an “illegal and unconstitutional public lynching.”
