Former Uvalde school police chief and officer indicted over Robb Elementary response, reports say

Austin, Texas — The former Uvalde school police chief and another former officer have been charged for their roles on the force the slow response of the police to the 2022 massacre at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers on Thursday, according to multiple reports.

The Uvalde Leader News and the San Antonio Express News reported that former school police chief Pete Arredondo and former officer Adrian Gonzales have been indicted by a grand jury on multiple felony counts of child endangerment and abandonment. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the charges.

The Austin American statesman also reported that two former officers had been charged, but had not identified them.

Mitchell did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Several family members of shooting victims did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The charges would make Arredondo, who was the commander on the scene during the attack, and Gonzales the first officers to face criminal charges in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. damning report from Texas lawmakers who investigated the police response, described Gonzales as one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting began.

The charges were kept secret until the men were in custody. They were expected to turn themselves in by Friday, the news organizations reported.

The charges come more than two years after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom, where he remained for more than 70 minutes before officers confronted and killed him. In all, 376 law enforcement officers gathered at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. Some waited in the hallway outside the classroom, while the gunman could be heard inside firing an AR-15-style rifle.

The office of a former attorney for Arredondo said it did not know if the former chief has new representation. The AP could not immediately find a phone number to reach Gonzales.

Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the Justice Department and state legislatures criticized law enforcement for botching its response to the massacre.

Whether officers will face criminal charges for their actions in Uvalde has been a question hanging over the city of 15,000 since the Texas Rangers completed their investigation and turned their findings over to prosecutors.

Mitchell’s office has also come under scrutiny. Uvalde city officials filed a lawsuit last year who accused prosecutors of not being transparent and withholding documents related to the shooting. Media, including the AP, Uvalde officials have sued for withholding data requested under public information legislation.

But bodycam footage, investigations by journalists and damning government reports have exposed how, over the course of more than an hour, a mass of officers went in and out of the school with guns drawn, but did not enter the classroom where the shooting took place. The hundreds of officers on the scene included state police, Uvalde police, school officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

In their July 2022 report, Texas lawmakers criticized law enforcement at all levels by failing to “prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.” The Justice released its own report in January detailing the police’s “cascading failures” in waiting far too long to confront the shooter, acting “without urgency” in setting up a command post and passing inaccurate information to grieving families.

Uvalde remains divided between residents who say they want to put the tragedy behind them and others who still want answers and accountability. During the first mayoral election since the shooting, the locals voted a man who had been mayor over a decade ago about a mother who led calls for stricter gun laws after her daughter was killed in the attack.

Robb Elementary School is now permanently closed. The city broke ground on a new school in October 2023.

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Read the full AP report on the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting