The first criminal charges have been filed in Uvalde, Texas, against law enforcement officers involved in the botched response to the fatal shooting at Robb Elementary School in 2022.
Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo was indicted by a grand jury Thursday and arrested on 10 felony counts of child endangerment. Arredondo, who posted bail the same day, did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Arredondo was the police incident commander who responded to the shooting on May 24, 2022. After an 18-year-old gunman barricaded himself in a classroom of students and teachers, Arredondo and other officers stood in the hallway for more than an hour waiting for a key to enter the locked classroom.
A total of 376 police officers responded to the shooting that day. The gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
According to NBC News, a second former school district official, Adrian Gonzales, has been indicted on similar charges.
Shortly after the shooting, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety largely blamed Arredondo for the delayed response, calling the police response an “abject failure.” The New York Times found that highly trained law enforcement officers from other agencies also failed to act decisively and with urgency.
Arredondo resigned from the Uvalde City Council in July 2022 and was fired as the school district’s police chief a month later.
Families of the shooting victims have called for criminal charges against the officers. Jesse Rizo, whose niece Jacklyn Cazares was among the dead, told the Tribune he hoped this was “just the beginning of the charges that may come.”
“There are a lot of officers who need to be held accountable,” he added.
There was some movement on gun safety laws in Texas after the massacre, which was the deadliest school shooting in state history, but the GOP-led Texas Legislature has largely pushed through other measures, including a bill to pay teachers arm. President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan gun safety bill into law the month after the shooting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
