UVALDE — Pete Arredondo, the former police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, was arrested Thursday, more than two years after the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Arredondo was booked into the Uvalde County Jail on 10 counts of child abuse, Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco told CBS News in a text message. He was released from custody after posting $10,000 bail, Nolasco said.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that Arredondo and a second officer who responded to the Uvalde shooting were indicted by a grand jury.
In a statement to CBS News on Thursday night, the school district said it was “newly made aware of the grand jury’s decision on two indictments” and that it had “no information beyond what is being reported in the media.”
“As we have done and continue to do, we extend our sincere condolences to all who have lost loved ones,” Uvalde CISD said. “Our hearts go out to all who have been affected by this challenging situation.”
The alleged charges reported by the Express-News come more than two years after a teenage shooter 19 students and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary. Police officers killed the gunman in a classroom after more than an hour wait to confront him, which was heavily criticized in the aftermath of the shooting. Arredondo was fired in 2022, three months after the day of the shooting.
The The Justice Department released a strong report in January over the police response to the mass shooting, pointing to a series of “successive failures” by the police chief and others.
In May, relatives of Victims of the Uvalde school shooting reached a $2 million settlement with Uvalde. The city of Uvalde will pay a total of $2 million to the families of the children killed in the shooting and two children who survived, according to a statement from the families’ attorneys.
