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.
Mr. 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 gunman, 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, Mr. Arredondo is expected to appear 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 are 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 Mr. Arredondo responded to reports of shots fired on May 24, 2022, an active shooter was already “hunting and shooting” the children and the teachers, the lawyers argued in their motion.
Mr. 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 Mr. 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 gunman.
Investigators have said that Mr. Arredondo was largely to blame for classifying the gunman 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 Mr. Arredondo, has also been charged. Mr. 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 Mr. Gonzales, Nico LaHood, said that his client also expected to be present in court on Monday and contended that he holds 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,” Mr. LaHood said.
Javier Montemayor, one of the lawyers representing Mr. Arredondo, said he expected the defense’s motion to quash the indictment will be discussed during Monday’s pretrial hearing, though it was not clear whether the judge would rule on it immediately.
The district attorney in Uvalde, Christina Mitchell, did not respond to a request for comment.
The hearing will provide the first opportunity for the families of the victims and survivors to directly face Mr. Arredondo, who until now has avoided public appearances.
Many of them said they planned to attend, if only to hold him publicly to account.
Kassandra Martinez, whose son, AJ Martinez, was shot in the thigh and survived the shooting, said she planned to attend the hearing to see Mr. Arredondo finally face the criminal justice system.
“I hope that when Pete actually goes to court on Monday, he sees us and doesn’t forget our faces,” Ms. Martinez said.
Convictions of officers who fail to follow mass shooting protocols remain rare.
In Parkland, Fla., a jury last year acquitted Scot Peterson, a school resource officer charged over his failure to confront the gunman in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Mr. Peterson, a former sheriff’s deputy, had been charged with child neglect and other crimes in the shooting, which left 17 people dead.
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