Former Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who oversaw the botched response to the 2022 elementary school shooting where 21 people, including 19 children were killed, was arrested on Thursday on child endangerment charges, officials said. It is the first criminal charge brought against law enforcement for the tragedy.
Arredondo was booked into a Texas facility Thursday afternoon and later released on bond. Another officer, Adrián González, was charged with the same crimes. The news comes as families of the victims advance several lawsuits against law enforcement and others involved in the shooting.
The latest one took place earlier this month, when they sued shipping companies FedEx and UPS for sending weapon components to the massacre perpetrator, alleging that in doing so they violated state and federal law as well as their own corporate safety standards.
The lawsuit was filed on the two-year anniversary of the shooting, The Texas Tribune reported, and claims the companies are partly responsible for the ensuing trauma and distress the survivors have suffered.
The shooter, 19-year-old Salvador Ramos, was armed with a weapon ordered online and shipped to Oasis Firearms in Uvalde before being picked up by him. He also ordered an enhanced trigger system, which was sent to his house and allowed him to turn a firearm to a fully automatic or semi-automatic weapon.
Survivors' families also filed a suit against Meta, the maker of Call of Duty videogame "Activision" and Daniel Defense, the company that manufactured the AR-15 rifle used by the gunman.
The families reached in May reached a settlement with the city but at the same time sued over 90 state police officers who were part of the force's botched response to the situation.
The settlement amounts to $2 million and also includes the promise of higher standards and better training for local police.
Close to 400 federal, state and local officers were at some point at the scene, but they waited over an hour to enter the school. The lawsuit alleges state troopers did not follow their training and responsibility to engage with the shooters despite students and teachers did.
"The protocols trap teachers and students inside, leaving them fully reliant on law enforcement to respond quickly and effectively," the families and their attorneys said in a statement. Footage that surfaced in the following months showed police waiting in the hallway while the shooter was inside the classroom.
The images caused generalized uproar as it showed police refusing to engage for about an hour. Ramos was killed 84 minutes after arriving at the school.
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