By NADIA LATHAN, Associated Press/Report for America
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge refused Thursday to dismiss criminal charges accusing the former Uvalde school police chief of putting children in danger in a slow response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting have.
Pete Arredondo said he was wrongly accused and that the shooter was responsible for endangering victims in the school attack on May 24, 2022. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed.
Arredondo also said he was made a scapegoat for the faltering police response. Nearly 400 police officers rushed to the scene in rural South Texas but waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill the gunman in a fourth-grade classroom.
Judge Sid Harle announced the sentence during a hearing in a Uvalde courtroom.
Arredondo has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of abandoning or endangering a child, each punishable by up to two years in prison. He and former Uvalde school official Adrian Gonzales are the only officials charged for their actions that day.
Gonzales has not asked the judge to dismiss his charges but could do so at a later date.
The indictment against Arredondo alleges he failed to follow his active shooter training and made key decisions that slowed the police response while the shooter “hunted” his victims.
Instead of immediately confronting the shooter, Arredondo caused delays by directing officers to clear a hallway to wait for a SWAT team, first evacuating students from other areas of the building and attempting to deal with the shooter to negotiate while the victims were wounded and dying in the classroom.
Arredondo's lawyers say the danger that day came not from him but from the shooter. They claim Arredondo was accused of trying to save the lives of the other children in the building and warned that criminal prosecution against him would lead to many prosecutions on similar charges in the future.
The Robb Elementary School massacre was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, and the law enforcement response was widely condemned as a massive failure.
Nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents, 91 state troopers, and school and city police officers rushed to campus. As frightened students and teachers called 911 from classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway wondering what to do. More than an hour later, a team of officers entered the classroom and killed the gunman.
A few days after the shooting, the focus of the slow response turned to Arredondo, who was described by other responders as the incident commander in charge.
Multiple federal and state investigations have exposed cascading problems in law enforcement training, communications, leadership and technology, and questioned whether officers prioritize their own lives over those of children and teachers. Several victims or their families have filed multiple state and federal lawsuits.
Associated Press reporter Jim Vertuno contributed in Austin, Texas.
Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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