Former Uvalde school police chief asks court to toss charges

UVALDE, Texas — More than two years after a teenage gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in the Texas city of Uvalde, several state and federal investigations have all placed some responsibility for the botched police response on a key figure: the school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo.

Arredondo, who was one of the first officers to arrive on scene and acted as the incident commander, failed to mount the “urgent intervention” needed to save more children’s lives, according to a criminal indictment filed against him. Instead of rushing to confront the shooter, various investigations found, he and scores of officers who arrived later waited for shields, backup officers and keys to a classroom door that was ultimately found to be unlocked.

On Monday, Arredondo appeared in a criminal court for the first time since the tragedy, charged by a grand jury in June with 10 counts of endangering a child for his role in the slow police response. His lawyers have been seeking to have the charges dismissed, arguing that he cannot be held criminally liable for actions he did not take and that the indictment fails to clearly state what actions he did take that put the lives of the victims in danger.

By the time Arredondo responded to reports of shots fired May 24, 2022, an active shooter was already “hunting and shooting” the children and the teachers, the lawyers argued in their motion.

Arredondo has contended that he was not the incident commander, and his lawyers said it does not matter in the context of the indictment. “Such an allegation may invoke a moral duty to perform his job well, but it fails to invoke a legal duty,” the lawyers argued in their filings.

But the indictment said Arredondo endangered the children by trying to negotiate with the gunman while he “was engaged in an active shooter incident, delaying the response by law enforcement officers to a gunman who was hunting and shooting a child or children.”

The shooting occurred just days before the summer break at Robb Elementary School, when a teenager armed with an AR-15-style rifle made his way to two connected classrooms, killing 19 fourth grade students and two teachers and wounding many others.

The various inquiries have found that the response was hindered by chaos and misinformation. About 370 officers were involved to one degree or another in the police response, most of them stationed outside the premises. Some 78 minutes elapsed before a tactical team led by federal Border Patrol agents entered the classrooms and killed the shooter.

Investigators have said that Arredondo was largely to blame for classifying the assailant as a barricaded subject after he holed up in the classrooms with the students and teachers, rather than as an active shooter. A barricaded subject situation normally calls for negotiations with a perpetrator instead of more aggressive action.

But the gunman in this case continued to fire sporadically while in the classroom, including at officers who initially tried to enter. As the delay continued, some students lay wounded and bleeding, with some students furtively calling 911 from inside the classroom and pleading for intervention.

A second school officer, Adrian Gonzales, who worked alongside Arredondo, has also been charged and appeared in court Monday. Gonzales was one of the first to arrive at the scene and was aware of the gunman’s location, the indictment said, but he did not “engage, distract and delay the shooter, and failed to otherwise act to impede the shooter until after the shooter entered Rooms 111 and 112 of Robb Elementary School.”

A lawyer for Gonzales, Nico LaHood, contended that he held no blame for the tragedy.

“We have not seen or even heard of any evidence that can be substantiated to hold him guilty of the charges,” LaHood said in an interview.

The judge did not rule immediately on the motion to dismiss the case, instead setting another hearing for Dec. 19.

The district attorney in Uvalde, Christina Mitchell, appeared in court but did not respond to a request for comment. She has enlisted several other lawyers to act as special prosecutors to help in the case, including Bill Turner, a former district attorney with Brazos County. Turner took the leading role as a special prosecutor during the hearing on Monday.

The hearing provided the first opportunity for the families of the victims and survivors to directly face Arredondo, who until now has avoided public appearances.

Most remained quiet during the 15-minute proceeding, though at least one of them gasped, “Oh my God,” when Arredondo walked in wearing a dark blue suit and gray tie.

Kassandra Martinez, whose son, AJ Martinez, was shot in the thigh and survived the shooting, said she had wanted to see Arredondo finally face the criminal justice system and hoped that “he sees us and doesn’t forget our faces.”

Jesse Rizo, whose niece Jackie Cazares died in the shooting, afterward described locking eyes with Arredondo as both men walked into court at the same time.

“It was like seeing a ghost,” Rizo said.

After the hearing, some of the families followed Arredondo and Gonzales as they left the court. Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah Silguero, was one of the victims, pointed at a shirt with an image of her daughter and yelled: “Look at my shirt! That’s my daughter!”

Then she watched them drive away. “I don’t want them to forget why we are here,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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