Pete Arredondo defended himself in his first extensive remarks since the massacre. The police response to the shooting has been heavily criticized.
The Texas school police chief criticized for his actions during said in his first extensive comments since the massacre, published Thursday, that he didn’t consider himself the person in charge as it unfolded and assumed someone else had taken control of the law enforcement response. Pete Arredondo, 50, the police chief of the Uvalde school district, also told The Texas Tribune he intentionally left behind both his police and campus radios before entering Robb Elementary School. An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers behind a locked classroom door the chief said was reinforced with a steel jamb and couldn’t be kicked in. Poor radio communications is among the and why they didn’t confront the gunman for more than an hour, even as anguished parents outside the school urged officers to go in. Separately, The New York Times reported Thursday that documents show police waited for protective equipment as they delayed entering the campus, even as they became aware that some victims needed medical treatment. Arredondo told the Tribune that from the hallway of the school, he used his cell phone to call for tactical gear, a sniper and keys to get inside the classroom. He said he held back from the door for 40 minutes to avoid provoking gunfire and tried dozens of keys brought to him but that, one-by-one, they failed to work.
«Each time I tried a key I was just praying», he told the Tribune. In the more than two weeks since the shooting, Arredondo’s actions have come under intensifying scrutiny from both state officials and experts trained in mass shooting responses. But Arredondo defended his actions and those of other law enforcement, remarking to the Tribune that, «Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children», Arredondo said. «We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.
