The police chief for schools in Uvalde, Texas, failed to identify an active shooting, did not follow his training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response to stop a killer who was “hunting” victims, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday.
The gunman ultimately killed 21 people at Robb Elementary school.
Pete Arredondo was arrested and briefly booked into jail before he was released on Thursday night on 10 state jail felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child in the May 24, 2022, attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in one of the worst school shootings in US history.
Former school officer Adrian Gonzales also was indicted on multiple similar charges, the Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported.
The Uvalde newspaper reported that district attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment.
In a statement, a lawyer for Mr Gonzales called the charges against police “unprecedented in the state of Texas”.
“Mr Gonzales’ position is he did not violate school district policy or state law,” said Nico LaHood, the former district attorney for Bexar County, which includes San Antonio.
Mr Arredondo, who was the on-site commander during the attack, and Mr Gonzales are the first officers to face criminal charges.
The indictment against Mr Arredondo accused the chief of delaying the police response despite hearing shots fired and being notified that injured children were in the classrooms and that a teacher had been shot.
Mr Arredondo called for a SWAT team, ordered the initial responding officers to evacuate the building instead of confronting the gunman, and attempted to negotiate with the 18-year-old, the indictment said.
Mr Arredondo’s actions and inactions amounted to “criminal negligence”, the indictment said.
More than 370 federal, state and local officers converged on the scene, but they waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman, even as he could be heard firing an AR-15-style rifle.
Terrified pupils inside the classroom called 911 as agonised parents begged officers — some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway — to go in.
A tactical team of officers eventually went into the classroom and killed the gunman.
The indictment charges Mr Arredondo with failing to protect survivors of the attack, including Khloie Torres, who called 911 and begged for help, telling a dispatcher: “Please hurry. There’s a lot of dead bodies. Some of my teachers are still alive but they’re shot.”
The state jail felony charges carry up to two years in jail if convicted.
Scathing state and federal investigative reports on the police response previously catalogued “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology problems that day.
Mr Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the Department of Justice and state politicians accused law enforcement of botching their response to the massacre.
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