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A pair of indictments released Friday levied multiple state jail felony charges of child endangerment against former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo and one of his former officers for their response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.
The indictments detail the first criminal charges to be brought against law enforcement who were called to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. The 10-count indictment against Arredondo, accuses him of placing 10 children who survived the shooting in imminent danger by giving directions that delayed the police response and for failing to heed his training.
Former district officer Adrian Gonzales was also indicted on 29 counts of child endangerment, according to a separate indictment. Gonzales is accused of putting 29 children in imminent danger by failing to act to impede the shooter, suggesting that Gonzales had time to engage the shooter, after hearing shots and being advised of the shooter's location, before the shooter entered the classrooms.
Gonzales, the indictment reads, "failed to otherwise act in a way to impede the shooter until after the shooter entered rooms 111 and 112 of Robb Elementary School and shot at a child or children in Rooms 111 and 112."
The May 22, 2022 shooting, left 19 children and two teachers dead before Border Patrol agents killed the shooter.
The alleged failures by Arredondo include not identifying the situation as an active shooting after hearing shots fired and learning that a teacher and students had been wounded — Arredondo instead called for a SWAT team and ordered officers to evacuate a wing of the school — and not setting up a command center or enacting a response plan, which the indictment said paralyzed the response as law enforcement officers from local to federal agencies arrived at the school with no direction.
Arredondo also failed to determine if the door to one of the classrooms where children remained with the shooter was locked and failed to provide keys and breaching tools to get into the classrooms in a "timely" manner, according to the indictment.
The indictment calls Arredondo the designated incident commander at the scene; shortly after the shooting Arredondo said he did not consider himself the incident commander and that he never gave any orders. The indictment alleges that Arredondo decided to delay a breach until other classrooms were evacuated. Both Arredondo and Gonzales were booked into the Uvalde County Jail and released on bond.
Hundreds of law enforcement waited 77 minutes before the Border Patrol team rushed the room where the shooter was located and ended the standoff.
A grand jury returned the indictments six months after being convened and more than two years after the massacre. District Attorney Christina Mitchell said Friday that she had no comment.
Since the shooting, reviews by the state and federal government identified an assortment of failures in leadership, communication and training that resulted in children becoming trapped with the gunman for more than an hour.
Reporter Kayla Guo contributed to this story.
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