The former police chief of a Uvalde, Texas, school district who oversaw the response to the 2022 elementary school shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children, has been arrested on suspicion of child abuse, the Uvalde County Jail announced Thursday.
Pete Arredondo, 52, was arrested by police officers and is accused of abandoning and endangering a child, the jail said.
The indictment was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
The Uvalde Jail confirmed Arredondo was booked into the facility Thursday afternoon. Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco said Thursday evening that Arredondo was released on bail.
Arredondo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is unclear whether an attorney is representing him.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice released a 600-page report saying poor coordination, training and implementation of “active shooter” protocols led to a “failure” in the response by Uvalde officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School. May 24, 2022.
Instead of continuing to fight the 18-year-old gunman — who was locked in a classroom with 33 students and three teachers — officers retreated after an initial barrage and did not “immediately and continuously move forward to eliminate the threat,” the Justice Department said.
The officers were wrongly taught that a situation involving an active shooter — an armed person defined by federal authorities as “actively” killing or attempting to kill others — “can easily escalate into a hostage crisis,” the report said.
More than 70 minutes passed between the time officers arrived at the school and the time the shooter was confronted and killed. In addition to the 19 students, two teachers were fatally shot and 17 others were wounded.
State lawmakers previously reached a conclusion similar to that of the Justice Department, with a 2022 report saying “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making” plagued the law enforcement and school district response.
Arredondo, described in the Justice Department report as the de facto commander of the incident, was among the officers who received administrative punishment for the response.
Last year, the Uvalde school board fired him. His attorney at the time described him as a victim of the shooting and said his firing was an “illegal and unconstitutional public lynching.”
The school district said in a statement that it had no information.
“As we have done and continue to do, we extend our sincere condolences to all who have lost loved ones,” the statement said. “Our hearts go out to all those affected by this challenging situation.”
Berlinda Arreola, whose 10-year-old granddaughter, Amerie Jo Garza, was among the dead, said Thursday that Arredondo’s arrest is not a “happy moment.”
“It’s still a sad moment. There’s nothing to be happy about,” she said. “We have to relive this nightmare, knowing that they had the chance to save some of our loved ones — maybe all of them.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
