Former Uvalde (Texas) school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and another former district officer have been indicted on charges of child endangerment in connection with the botched response to the 2022 elementary school shooting that killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers.
The Texas Tribune reports that Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales face felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child, the newspaper reported.
The charges come more than two years after the May 24, 2022 shooting attack at Robb Elementary School.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell convened a grand jury in January to investigate law enforcement’s delayed response and to determine whether to bring criminal charges against any of the nearly 400 federal, state and local officers involved in the response. Law enforcement officers waited 77 minutes to confront the gunman, who was ultimately shot and killed by Border Patrol officers.
In the months following the shooting, about a dozen officers were fired, suspended or retired. Arredondo was fired about three months after the shooting. He was listed as incident commander on the school district’s active shooter response plan.
The Associated Press reports that an attorney for Gonzales called the charges against law enforcement “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.
The indictment against 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.
Arredondo’s actions and inactions amounted to “criminal negligence,” the indictment said.
