Two Uvalde police officers charged with reckless response to Robb Elementary School shooting

More than two years after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which law enforcement officers stood by for 77 minutes as a gunman fired at students and teachers, a grand jury has indicted the school district’s former police chief and another former officer on multiple felonies.

A grand jury on Thursday issued indictments against former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school police officer Adrian Gonzales.

Flowers and candles are laid in front of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday, May 25, 2022, to honor the victims of Tuesday’s school shooting. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The officers were the first to face criminal charges for the disastrous police response that took place on May 24, 2022, when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former Robb Elementary student, entered a fourth-grade classroom and began killing 19 children, ages 9 and 10, and two teachers, while injuring 17 others.

Arredondo, 52, turned himself in to the Uvalde Texas Rangers on Thursday and was arrested on 10 counts of child endangerment and known neglect. Uvalde jail officials confirmed his arrest. After setting bail at $10,000 and nine $10,000 personal sureties, the former police chief posted bail and was released.

The indictment said that while serving as the school district’s police chief and incident commander during the shooting, Arredondo “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, and with criminal negligence” exposed 10 children to “imminent danger of bodily injury, death, physical impairment, and mental impairment.”

The indictment said the chief heard gunshots in the classroom and “failed to recognize the incident as a shooting, failed to respond in accordance with his training in the event of a shooting, and instead called SWAT, thereby delaying the response of law enforcement officers.”

The indictment alleged that Arredondo ordered law enforcement officers to evacuate the wing before confronting the shooter, failed to determine whether the door to room 111 was locked and failed to “timely provide keys and tools to gain entry to rooms 111 and 112.”

Gonzales, 51, was arrested and released from jail Friday, according to the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office. The indictment said Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of felony abandonment or child endangerment because he allegedly placed 29 children in “imminent danger” of injury or death.

The indictment also states that Gonzales heard the shots and was informed of the shooter’s general location at Robb Elementary. The indictment accuses the officer of failing to make contact, distract, delay or impede the shooter until the gunman entered classrooms 111 and 112 and fired his weapon at the children, and the officer failed to follow his firearms training by not approaching the shooting room after the gunfire.

Several official inquiries have found that while there were 376 police officers on the scene at Robb Elementary School, there was a “failure at every level” of law enforcement. The shooter was given permission to fire an AR-15-style assault rifle more than 100 times before police intervened and killed him.

The only fact that the investigation did not address in the context of the events of that day is that the officers – instead of taking action against the shooter – were busy abusing and brutalizing the parents who had gathered in front of the school, were terrified by the police’s inaction and tried to forcefully enter the classroom to save their children themselves.

The charges filed Thursday were the result of an investigation by the Uvalde County District Attorney that culminated in the decision to empanel a grand jury on Oct. 25, 2022, five months after the mass shooting. It took another 20 months for the grand jury to return an indictment.

Throughout this process, parents and family members in Uvalde’s working-class community have been hampered by school officials and local, state and federal politicians who have failed to identify who should be held responsible for the tragic deaths of so many young children.

In part, the indictment against Arredondo and Gonzales — who should be held accountable for their response at the scene of the shooting — seeks to place blame for the entire botched response to the mass shooting on the school district’s two police officers while shielding others, such as Texas Department of Public Safety officers, who were also present that day.