Former Uvalde police chief Pete Arredondo told state investigators the day following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School last May that he prioritised protecting students from other classrooms instead of trying to confront the gunman.
Mr Arrendondo, who was fired from his role with the school district in August, made the comments to officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). That interview was taped and obtained by CNN.
Mr Arrendondo’s decision not to confront the gunman who was inside a classroom in the elementary school baffled many observers and led to an avalanche of criticism from a range of figures including the director of DPS. Law enforcement officers made no attempt to confront the gunman inside the classroom where he was attacking students and teachers for more than an hour, even though multiple officers were waiting in the hallway outside.
In the interview with DPS, Mr Arrendondo explained his thinking — informing the interviewers that his priority was keeping the gunman “contained” and not endangering people in other rooms in the school building.
“Once I realized that was going on, my first thought is that we need to vacate,” Mr Arredondo said. “We have him contained — and I know this is horrible and I know it’s [what] our training tells us to do but — we have him contained, there’s probably going to be some deceased in there, but we don’t need any more from out here.”
Mr Arredondo stuck by his decision even as he believed he heard the gunman reloading his weapon and as he got word that children who were injured were trapped in a classroom with him. Mr Arrendondo did not comment on the CNN story.
21 people, including 19 students and two teachers, were killed in the shooting. Of those, at least three were still alive throughout the entire time that the gunman was in the classroom.
Mr Arrendondo’s response did not follow police protocol. Active shooter training, which CNN reports Mr Arrendondo took three times, urges responding officers to “isolate, distract and neutralize” the attacker.
“First responders to the active shooter scene will usually be required to place themselves in harm’s way and display uncommon acts of courage to save the innocent,” the training course Mr Arrendondo took advises.
But that is not what Mr Arrendondo did, either as one of the first responding officers to the scene or as a commanding officer. He instead called for more officers with assault rifles to surround the school, even as armed officers stood inside it waiting to confront the shooter.
CNN reported that Mr Arrendondo was not asked during the DPS interview who was in command of the law enforcement response. Mr Arrendondo later said that he did not consider himself to be the commanding officer during the shooting, though surveillance footage from inside the school showed him giving multiple directives on the day of the shooting.
The entirety of the law enforcement response to the shoot has been heavily criticised in its aftermath. The day after the shooting, Mr Arrendondo seemed to have some sense of what was coming next.
“We’re going to get scrutinized, I’m expecting that,” Mr Arrendondo said in the DPS interview. “We’re getting scrutinized for why we didn’t go in there.”
