During a tense board meeting Monday, families urged Uvalde school officials to fire their police chief, citing the cop’s refusal to let officers engage an active shooter at Robb Elementary School last month.
During the open forum, held at the school’s auditorium four weeks after the shooting, eight people spoke, including relatives of the 21 victims and locals.
At the meeting, relatives of victims like Brett Cross joined a chorus of voices calling for Pete Arredondo’s dismissal after he was chastised for waiting to confront the gunman while the massacre was unfolding.
Arredondo, a Uvalde native who was elected to the Uvalde City Council just days before the May 24 shooting, has claimed that he told cops not to engage Salvador Ramos, 18, because he believed the teen had completed his killing spree and was trapped.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw has since called the move “the wrong decision,” and it has sparked protests across the state.
The release of a photo from inside the school that shows Arredondo’s armed men standing around doing nothing as the massacre unfolded has reignited questions about why cops didn’t storm the room sooner.
‘Having Pete still employed, knowing he is incapable of decision-making that saves lives, is terrifying,’ Brett Cross, uncle to 8-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia, told trustees in an emotional plea Monday evening.
Cross said he had helped raise the Robb Elementary student, the youngest to die in the attack, and that Arredondo, 50, took shots at the police for their shifting account of the shooting, and their hesitance to help the kids locked in the room with Ramos.
‘ Innocence doesn’t hide, innocence doesn’t change its story, but innocence did die on May 24,’ Cross said.
‘We were failed by Pete Arredondo. He failed our kids, teachers, parents, and city,’ the irate uncle sniped.
‘And by keeping him on your staff, ya’ll are continuing to fail us.’
Ryan Ramirez, father of ten-year-old victim Alithia Ramirez, expressed a similar opinion, delivering an impassioned, tear-filled plea to.
‘We all know that they (police) messed up, we all know that this wasn’t handled right,’ the dad told the board.
‘Y’all can do whatever you want to try and make us happy, it’s not going to work. Y’all know what we want, accountability.’
‘How are we supposed to continue our lives here when the people that are supposed to protect us let down our families,’ a crying Ramirez went on. ‘Do us a favor and do what you know is right and make these people accountable for what happened.’
Others echoed the call for accountability.
‘If nothing is done by this council to ensure the safety of our children, perhaps it is time for individuals who are willing to risk their lives for our children to fill your seats,’ said parent Angeli Gomez.
Gomez, who has two children in the second and third grades, is said to have driven 40 miles to the school after hearing about the attack.
She was one of many parents who urged the school’s stalled police officers to enter.
Federal marshals eventually placed Gomez in handcuffs and informed her that she was being held for interfering with an ongoing investigation.
Gomez, on the other hand, was able to persuade a Uvalde officer she knew to release her, and she used the opportunity to leap over the school fence, dash inside, and rescue her children herself.
Other parents attempting to reach their children were tackled and pepper-sprayed by police, she claimed. Parents’ footage from the scene has since corroborated those claims.
Meanwhile, the first image from inside the school during the shooting, which shows two Uvalde Police Department officers brandishing rifles and a ballistic shield.
The Austin-American Statesman and KVUE obtained that image of well-armed cops with a means of deflecting bullets on Monday night.
It’s also raised new questions about why gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, wasn’t apprehended sooner, before he could kill 19 children and two teachers in his classroom.
Ramos had entered the school 19 minutes before and started shooting.
However, cops would not enter the classroom where he was murdering children for another 58 minutes, despite the fact that the new image shows they had both a means of self-defense and a means of capturing Ramos.
It has been revealed that Texas police armed with a ballistic shield and rifle were inside the Uvalde school’s corridors 19 minutes after the gunman entered the building, raising concerns about why the officers did not enter the classroom for another 58 minutes.
Parents and relatives of the 19 children and two teachers killed on May 24 are furious, demanding to know why the 18-year-old gunman was allowed to go on killing spree for nearly 90 minutes.
At 11:33 a.m., he entered the school and was shot dead at 12:50 p.m.
The gunman was barricaded inside, away from the children, according to Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, who wanted more equipment for the cops before they went in. However, the children were calling 911 for assistance, and police outside were pleading with Arredondo to let them in.
The Austin-American Statesman obtained the first photos from inside the school on Monday, which showed officers in the corridor at 11:52 a.m.
One has a long gun and a ballistic shield. The other is armed with a rifle.
It took 58 minutes for officers to break down the door and kill the gunman, Salvador Ramos.
The image will put even more pressure on the cops to come clean about what they knew and did at what time.
A hearing will be held in Austin on Tuesday to provide more information, with the new image and others likely to be shared.
The newspaper also obtained transcripts showing Arredondo pleading for assistance.
State officials revealed last month that students dialed 911 while locked in the classroom with Ramos, while Arredondo and his men waited outside for more than an hour.
Border Patrol agents eventually broke down the locked classroom door after hearing the incident unfold on scanners, with one fatally shooting Ramos.
The agents were perplexed as to why they were told not to enter the school and engage the gunman, according to a law enforcement official who spoke anonymously to The New York Times.
Arredondo made a mistake by assuming the active shooter situation had turned into a barricade event, according to McCraw, who identified the district chief by title rather than by name.
Parents have reacted angrily to Arredondo, 50, who wonder if their children could have been saved.
Arredondo, a Uvalde native, has had a relatively unremarkable career as a cop.
In 1993, he began working for Uvalde’s town police department as a 911 dispatcher, and over the next 20 years, he rose through the ranks to become the department’s assistant police chief in 2010.
After that, he worked at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in Laredo, a small Texas town about 100 miles from Uvalde, in a variety of roles. He then joined United ISD, the city’s school district police force, which has 88 sworn peace officers.
Arredondo had the opportunity to return home in March, during the early days of the pandemic, when he was offered the position of school district police chief in his hometown of Uvalde.
When Arredondo accepted the job, he told the Uvalde Leader News, “It’s nice to come back home.” Arredondo has family in the small, rural town.
Four officers, one police chief, and a detective make up the department, which only oversees the town’s seven-school district.
‘They are very knowledgeable, and I encourage them to give ideas,’ Arredondo said at the time.
‘Of course, my title is important, but having a good group is also important,’ Arredondo continued, adding, somewhat prophetically, ‘If you don’t have a good group, you can certainly fail.’
During Friday’s press conference, state director McCraw clarified information released by Arredondo’s department on Thursday, stating that the gunman entered the building unimpeded, contradicting previous claims that one of their officers exchanged fire with Ramos before the gunman entered.
In fact, as the gunman crouched behind a vehicle outside the building, police say the officer had passed by Ramos while rushing to the scene.
Arredondo was absent from Friday’s press conference, and it’s unclear whether he was even inside the school at the time of the shooting.
Meanwhile, first-hand accounts and videos of Uvalde police handcuffing and restraining frantic parents who were urging them to storm the Robb Elementary school building during the massacre are gaining traction.
‘The cops were doing nothing,’ Gomez said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. ‘They were just standing outside the fence,’ says the narrator. They had no intention of entering or fleeing.’
Angel Garza, whose daughter was killed, was handcuffed after attempting to run into the school after learning of the shooting of a ‘girl named Amerie.’
Garza later told Anderson Cooper about his heartbreaking story.
He explained that as a trained medic, he tried to help a young girl who was covered in blood when he arrived on the scene.
The girl stated that she was not injured and that the blood was from her best friend, ‘Amerie.’ Angel realized the blood he was looking at was from his own daughter at that point.
He later discovered that she was one of the victims.