Uvalde school district police chief put on leave after mass shooting
AUSTIN, Texas — The Uvalde school district’s police chief was put on leave following allegations that he erred in his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell said that he put schools police Chief Pete Arredondo on administrative leave and that another officer would assume the embattled chief’s duties.
Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a state Senate hearing on Tuesday that Chief Arredondo — the on-site commander — made “terrible decisions” as the massacre unfolded on May 24.
Three minutes after 18year-old Salvador Ramos entered the school, sufficient armed law enforcement were on scene to stop the gunman, Col. McCraw testified. Yet police officers armed with rifles waited in a school hallway for more than an hour while the gunman carried out the massacre. The classroom door could not be locked from the inside, but there is no indication officers tried to open the door while the gunman was inside, Col. McCraw said.
Col. McCraw has said parents begged police outside the school to move in and students inside the classroom repeatedly pleaded with 911 operators while more than a dozen officers waited in a hallway. Officers from other agencies urged Chief Arredondo to let them move in because children were in danger.
“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” Col. McCraw said.
Officials in Uvalde said Wednesday they are trying to secure federal funds to demolish the elementary school building, a first step toward heeding a call from parents and other family members that began soon after the massacre.
The first public hearings in Texas looking into the Uvalde school massacre have focused on a cascade of law enforcement blunders, school building safety and mental health care with only scant mentions of the shooter’s AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and gun reform.
The Republican- dominated committee examining the tragedy in Uvalde appeared to have little appetite for new guns laws, even after a series of mass shootings in Texas that killed more than 85 people in the past five years — at an El Paso Walmart, a church in Sutherland Springs, a Santa Fe High School outside Houston and in West Texas oil country.
The state’s Republicancontrolled legislature has spent the last decade chipping away at restrictions. Texas doesn’t require a permit to carry a long rifle like the one used in Uvalde. Last year, lawmakers made it legal for anyone 21 and older to carry a handgun in public without a license, background check or training.
Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, told the committee that tighter gun controls may have prevented past mass shootings in Texas and urged state lawmakers to consider a so-called “red flag” law and require background checks on private firearms sales.
“I’ve never seen anything like this past month in terms of the outrage, despair and heartbreak,” Ms. Golden said.
Outside the Senate chamber, nearly two dozen members of the gun control group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America held signs criticizing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and urging lawmakers to take up new restrictions on gun sales and ownership.
“We are tired of these donothing committees and roundtables that have been happening after every mass shooting in Texas,” said Melanie Greene, of Austin. “We’re tired of all the talk and we want some action.”