Newly uncovered video testimony shed more light on the reason why police officers responding to the Robb Elementary School shooting last May waited over an hour before breaching the classroom where the shooter was holed up with schoolchildren.
Former Uvalde school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo told investigators a day after the shooting that he abstained from immediately ordering officers to breach the classroom out of concern for other students in the school, according to testimony with the Texas Department of Public Safety obtained by CNN.
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“Once I realized that was going on, my first thought is that we need to vacate. We have him contained — and I know this is horrible, and I know it’s [what] our training tells us to do, but — we have him contained, there’s probably going to be some deceased in there, but we don’t need any more from out here,” Arredondo recounted, according to CNN.
Arredondo, a central figure in the firestorm over the Uvalde police response, subsequently stopped cooperating with DPS after getting blamed for the delayed response time before being booted from his post. A total of 22 people, including two adults, 19 children, and the shooter died in the attack that left 18 wounded. The mass shooting took place on May 24, 2022, and the school building was permanently shut down.
As Uvalde officers stood outside classrooms 111 and 112, a number of children in the room made calls to law enforcement pleading for their lives. The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center and other groups evaluated the Uvalde response and found a litany of instances in which officers failed to comply with protocols for active shooter situations and missed key opportunities to thwart the attack.
Arredondo had stood by his decision not to breach even after law enforcement had learned that surviving children had been barricaded in classrooms 111 and 112. Notably, Arredondo reportedly did not have his radio on him during parts of the response, contributing to communication issues. Arredondo was roundly criticized by top politicians in Texas during the aftermath of the massacre.
Initially, some speculated that officers had waited to barge the classrooms while looking for a master key, but subsequent reporting indicated that law enforcement didn’t attempt to open the classrooms. Ultimately, members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit shot the shooter.
The beleaguered former chief also told investigators that he heard the gunman reload while in the classrooms, indicating that he was likely aware there may have been some survivors, CNN reported.
“I know there’s probably victims in there, and with the shots I heard, I know there’s probably somebody who’s going to be deceased. I know these weren’t,” Arredondo added to investigators, referring to students in the other classrooms. “We’re going to get scrutinized. I’m expecting that. We’re getting scrutinized for why we didn’t go in there.”
He was not pressed about who was in command of the response, which later became a shifting narrative following the shooting. Families of shooting survivors filed a $27 billion lawsuit against law enforcement last year over the response to the shooting.
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When asked about what advice he would give to his successors handling active shooter situations, Arredondo stressed the importance of training.
“Never minimize your training, never minimize your equipment, and never minimize your communication.”
Arredondo has largely steered clear from the public eye since a controversy erupted over the police response. Records indicate that he underwent training sessions for active shooter scenarios on at least three occasions and only had a handgun on him during the shooting, according to CNN.
