Following a grand jury being called in response to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report on the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022, two law enforcement officers have been issued indictments — including former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo.
According to KVUE’s Tony Plohetski, Arredondo’s 10-count indictment alleges that he failed to protect survivors of the shooting and delayed law enforcement’s response. Officer Adrian Gonzales was also indicted and charged with abandoning or endangering a child, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.
Arredondo has since been booked on 10 counts of child endangerment and was later released on bond.
Gonzales is charged with 29 counts of child endangerment.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) told the San Antonio Express-News, “If they're going to indict those two officers, they need to indict the 13 [Department of Public Safety] troopers in that hallway.”
"That's very disturbing to me."
In February, sources confirmed that officers involved in the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary would begin testimony in front of the 12-member grand jury.
The DOJ report came over a year and a half after 19 students and two teachers were murdered in the massacre.
“The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24th, 2022 — and the response by officials in the hours and days after — was a failure,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated.
The 77-minute gap between when officers first arrived on the scene and when they finally confronted and killed the shooter was a point Garland emphasized as he highlighted the failure of responding officers, transitioning in their response from first engaging with the perpetrator as an “active shooter” to then retreating and treat him as a “barricaded subject.”
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta reiterated the “cascading failures” that led to the devastation at Robb Elementary and described the aftermath immediately following the incident as “chaotic.” She touched upon multiple incidents where law enforcement posted information on social media that was “false” and then “never corrected.”
One of the most significant “missteps in school safety” that Gupta spoke about was the “culture of complacency” when it came to the school door security policy.
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