Comment UVALDE, Texas — The Uvalde school district has fired Police Chief Pete Arredondo amid growing pressure in the grieving Texas city to punish officers for hesitating more than an hour to storm a classroom and take out the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers. In a unanimous vote Wednesday night, the Uvalde Unified Independent School District board fired Arredondo during a meeting also attended by parents and survivors of the May 24 massacre. Arredondo, who was not present, is the first officer to lose his job following one of the deadliest classroom shootings in US history. His removal comes three months after the tragedy and less than two weeks before students return to school in Uvalde, where some children are still afraid or scarred to return to class. The board faced intense criticism, with one young girl approaching a microphone to ask why law enforcement had failed to protect her friends and teachers. “Give your signal,” he demanded. The crowd cheered after the vote and some parents left in tears. Outside, several Uvalde residents called for other officers to be held accountable. “Coward!” some in the audience shouted as the meeting began. Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under the most intense scrutiny of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to the school but waited more than 70 minutes to confront the 18-year-old gunman in the fourth-grade classroom at the elementary school. Robb School. More specifically, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering the officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo was responsible for the law enforcement response to the attack. Minutes before the school board meeting began, Arredondo’s attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief’s most comprehensive defense to date of his actions. Over 17 provocative pages, Arredondo was portrayed not as a delusional chief accused in a damning state investigation of failing to take command and wasting time searching for keys to a potentially unlocked door, but as a brave officer whose level-headed decisions saved the lives of the other students. It claims Arredondo warned the district about various school safety issues a year before the shooting and claimed he was not responsible for the scene. The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of endangering his safety by not allowing him to bring a gun to the school board meeting, citing “legitimate risks of harm to the public and Chief Arredondo.” “Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who, along with all other police officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives that were saved, rather than those that were unable to arrive in time,” wrote George Hyde. . Hyde’s office has not responded to a request for comment. Uvalde school officials have come under increasing pressure from victims’ families and community members, many of whom had called for Arredondo’s termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell was first fired in July, but postponed the decision at the request of Arredondo’s attorney. At the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school. “Right now, being young, she’s having a hard time dealing with this horrible event,” Torres said. Shirley Zamora, mother of a student at Robb Elementary, said the blame shouldn’t end with Arredondo’s firing. “This will only be the beginning. It’s a long process,” he said. Only one other officer — Lt. Mariano Pargas of the Uvalde Police Department, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for his actions during the shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, is investigating the state police response. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said McCraw, the state police chief, also deserves scrutiny. “You fail at something so badly that people get hurt, then surely we have to have more responsibility,” he said. School officials said the Robb Elementary campus will no longer be in use when students return on Sept. 6. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in person after the hunt. School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas after the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving distance education to “10 percent of all enrolled students in a given school system.” . Schools can request a waiver to exceed the limit, but Uvalde has not, according to the Texas Department of Education. New measures to improve school security in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” on elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, improved training for area staff and improved communication. Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report. For more AP coverage of the Uvalde school shooting:
