**Former Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo Taken into Custody**
**UVALDE, Texas** — Pete Arredondo, the former police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, was arrested on Thursday, more than two years after the tragic 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting. Arredondo was booked into the Uvalde County Jail on 10 counts of child endangerment, according to Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco. He was released from custody after posting a $10,000 bond.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that a grand jury indicted Arredondo and another officer who responded to the Uvalde shooting. This development has brought a mix of emotions to the families of the victims. Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Jackie Cazares, one of the victims, expressed his feelings, saying, “I knew the day was going to come. I wasn’t sure how long it would take.”
In a statement to CBS News, the school district said it “only just learned about the grand jury decision regarding two indictments being issued” and had “no information separate from what is being reported by the media.” The district extended its “sincerest sympathies to all who lost loved ones” and acknowledged the challenging situation.
The indictments come over two years after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement officers killed the gunman in a classroom after waiting more than an hour to confront him, a delay that was heavily criticized. Arredondo was fired in 2022, three months to the day of the shooting.
Rizo called Arredondo’s arrest a step in the right direction and expressed hope for more indictments. “It’s obvious what he did was wrong. It’s obvious that he could’ve saved a lot of lives, but sitting there and looking for keys on a keychain for a long time. It’s just unacceptable,” Rizo said. “I’m surprised that a lot of other officers weren’t charged. I’m disappointed in that but I am happy to see that there is finally judgment coming.”
The Justice Department released a hard-hitting report in January on the response by law enforcement to the mass shooting, pointing to a series of “cascading failures” by the police chief and others. In May, family members of Uvalde school shooting victims reached a $2 million settlement with the city of Uvalde. The settlement will be paid to the families of the children killed in the shooting and two children who survived.
The former school district police chief in Uvalde, Texas, who oversaw the response to the 2022 elementary school shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children, was arrested on a child endangerment charge, the Uvalde jail said Thursday. Pete Arredondo, 52, was taken in by law enforcement officers and is accused of abandoning and endangering a child, the jail said.
The charge was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News. The Uvalde jail confirmed Arredondo was being booked into the facility Thursday afternoon. Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco said Thursday night that Arredondo was released on bond. Arredondo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It was unclear whether an attorney is representing him.
Early this year, the Justice Department released a 600-page report that said poor coordination, training, and execution of “active shooter” protocols led to a “failure” in the response of the Uvalde officers who rushed to the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. Instead of continuing to engage the 18-year-old gunman — who was locked in a classroom with 33 students and three teachers — officers retreated after an initial burst of gunfire and did not “push forward immediately and continuously to eliminate the threat,” the Justice Department said.
More than 70 minutes passed between the time officers arrived at the school and when the gunman was confronted and killed. In addition to the 19 students, two teachers were fatally shot, and 17 other people were injured. State lawmakers previously came to a conclusion similar to the Justice Department’s, with a 2022 report that said “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making” plagued the law enforcement and school district response.
Arredondo, described in the Justice Department’s report as the scene’s de facto commander, was among the officers to have faced administrative punishment over the response. Uvalde’s school board fired him last year. At the time, his lawyer described him as a victim of the shooting and said his firing was an “illegal and unconstitutional public lynching.”
In a statement, the school district said it had no information. “As we have done and continue to do, we extend our sincerest sympathies to all who lost loved ones,” it said. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this challenging situation.”
Berlinda Arreola, whose 10-year-old granddaughter, Amerie Jo Garza, was among those killed, said Thursday that Arredondo’s arrest is not a “happy moment.” “It’s still a sad moment. There’s nothing to be happy about,” she said. “We are having to relive this nightmare again knowing they had the chance to save some of our loved ones — maybe all of them.”
The former Uvalde schools police chief and another former officer have been indicted over their role in the slow police response to the 2022 massacre at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, the local sheriff said Thursday. Pete Arredondo was indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of felony child endangerment/abandonment and briefly booked into the county jail before he was released on bond, according to jail records.
The Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported that former school officer Adrian Gonzales also was indicted on multiple similar charges. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment. Mitchell did not return phone and email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Several family members of victims of the shooting did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
The indictments would make Arredondo, who was the on-site commander during the attack, and Gonzales the first officers to face criminal charges in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. A scathing report by Texas lawmakers that examined the police response described Gonzales as one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting began.
The indictments were kept under seal until the men were in custody. It was unclear when Arredondo’s indictment would be publicly released. Over two years ago, 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 total, 376 law enforcement officers massed at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, some waiting in the hallway outside the classroom, even as the gunman could be heard firing an AR-15-style rifle inside.
“Today is another day in an impossibly painful journey,” state Rep. Joe Moody, who helped the state lawmakers investigation, posted on the social platform X. “The hurt for them will never subside. Today, I pray that there is justice and some sense of closure for them in this process rather than prolonged suffering.”
The office of a former attorney for Arredondo said they did not know whether 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 Department of Justice and state lawmakers faulted law enforcement with botching their response to the massacre.
Whether any officers would face criminal charges over 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 in 2022 that accused prosecutors of not being transparent and withholding records related to the shooting. Media outlets, including the AP, also sued Uvalde officials for withholding records requested under public information laws.
But body camera footage, investigations by journalists, and damning government reports have laid bare how over the course of over an hour, a mass of officers went in and out of the school with weapons drawn but did not go inside the classroom where the shooting was taking place. The hundreds of officers at the scene included state police, Uvalde police, school officers, and U.S. Border Patrol agents.
In their July 2022 report, Texas lawmakers faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.” The Justice Department released its own report in January that detailed “cascading failures” by police in waiting far too long to confront the gunman, acting with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and communicating inaccurate information to grieving families.
In a statement to NBC 5, Uvalde CISD stated: “As with the rest of the Uvalde community, we have only just learned about the grand jury decision regarding two indictments being issued. We have no information separate from what is being reported by the media. As we have done and continue to do, we extend our sincerest sympathies to all who lost loved ones. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this challenging situation.”
The Uvalde Foundation For Kids says they’ve called for accountability since day one. “Our foundation, regardless of the ultimate outcome in the case, does not rely on such to create the necessary change needed to protect our students in Uvalde or otherwise in the future. It will take a combined commitment of the legal system, educators, mental health experts, mothers, fathers & students themselves; beyond legal motions or stricter gun laws to prevent another Uvalde. It is about changing the culture of violence in America before a weapon is ever picked up or fist is clenched.”
Uvalde remains divided between residents who say they want to move past the tragedy and others who still want answers and accountability. During the first mayoral race since the shooting, locals voted in a man who had served as mayor more than a decade ago over a mother who led calls for tougher 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.
**Source:** CBS News, San Antonio Express-News, Uvalde Leader-News, Associated Press, NBC News, ABC News
