Uvalde Police Chief Breaks Silence 2 Weeks After Shooting: 'People Who Just Don't Know the Whole Story' Are Making 'Assumptions'

The police chief of the Uvalde, Texas, school district, Pete Arredondo, defended his handling of the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

Many individuals “who just don’t’ know the whole story” were “making their assumptions on what they’re’ hearing or reading,” Arredondo told The Texas Tribune in an interview published Thursday.

On May 24, 18-year-old gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos walked into Robb Elementary School carrying a semi-automatic rifle. Ramos opened fire, killing 19 children and two adults and wounding several others until Border Patrol agents killed him.

That it was a team of Border Patrol agents who shot the gunman and not police officers who were present much earlier at the scene raised questions about what the local police department did during the incident.

The director of Texas’ Department of Public Safety, Stephen McCraw, confirmed to journalists in a news conference later that week that there was a 40-minute delay in officers’ response to the gunman.

“The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject,” McCraw said, calling the decision to wait for backup and not directly engage the shooter “a wrong decision.”

Although McCraw did not name Arredondo as the specific “on-scene commander” that day, multiple reports identified him as the “incident commander” during the shooting.

Arredondo told the Tribune that he did not consider himself to be the incident commander that day. The chief, however, said he and his colleagues were willing to confront the shooter, pushing back against criticism of cowardice.

“The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible,” Arredondo said, according to the Tribune.

“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.”

The 40-minute delay in officers’ response, according to Arredondo, was because officers needed to find the key to the classroom door, which was “reinforced with a hefty steel jamb, designed to keep an attacker on the outside from forcing their way in,” so they could not open the door by simply kicking it in, Arredondo said, according to the Tribune.

Hence, Arredondo and his colleagues spent about an hour in the school’s hallways, waiting for the keys and tactical gear. Arredondo asked officers to back off from near the door for 40 minutes to avoid provoking gunfire from Ramos, the chief told the Tribune.

https://www.westernjournal.com/uvalde-police-chief-breaks-silence-2-weeks-shooting-people-just-dont-know-whole-story-making-assumptions/