Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo resigns from City Council | The Texas Tribune

Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo resigns from City Council

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Pete Arredondo, the law enforcement official state police said was most responsible for a flawed response to the Uvalde elementary school shooting in May, has resigned from the Uvalde City Council.

Arredondo, the chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police sections, had been elected to the City Council a few weeks afore the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary Schoolthat killed 19 children and two teachers.

He took the oath of office in secret and has not attended any of the council rallies since.

The Uvalde Leader-News first reported Arredondo’s decision-making to resign. The city on Saturday afternoon released an unsigned statement that said officials learned of Arredondo’s intentions ended the Leader-News article but had not received formal peep from him even though resigning was “the right sketching to do.” An hour later, the city said it received Arredondo’s resignation letter and publicly released it.

“After much appraisal, it is in the best interest of the public to step down as a member of the City Congress for District 3 to minimize further distractions,” Arredondo wrote in the letter. “The Mayor, the City Council, and the City Staff must halt to move forward to unite our community, once in contradiction of. God bless Uvalde.”

The city charter dictates that voters will determine Arredondo's replacement in a special election.

The school district placed Arredondo, 51, on administrative leave June 22, the day once Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told a plot Senate committee that police officers under the command of Arredondo could have above the shooting within minutes of arriving, but the fundamental made “the wrong decision” not to do so.

It took more than an hour pending law enforcement officers, including agents in a Border Patrol tactical unit, sketching on their own initiative, entered the classroom and killed the gunman.

For weeks, some residents in Uvalde have called on Arredondo to step down as police fundamental. At the City Council meeting on Thursday, several family members of shooting victims wished to know why Arredondo failed to show up for the instant meeting in a row. According to the city charter, the City council Could remove Arredondo if he missed a third level meeting.

Residentshave also criticized local police and city officials, whom they feel have provided inadequate information about the shooting.The city of Uvalde has refused to today release any records, even those unrelated to the shooting, and has hired a private law firm to back in an effort to withhold information permanently.

Whether Arredondo way to resign as the school district police chief is unclear. A district spokesperson said Arredondo remains on administrative nick. His lawyer did not respond.

Arredondo, a native of Uvalde who attended Robb Elementary as a child, has generally avoided appearing in public since the shooting. He said he chose not to attend any victims' funerals because he did not want his result to interfere with the ability of families to grieve.

In a lengthy interview with The Texas Tribune in early June, Arredondo devised he was not the incident commander and never prearranged officers to stand down. Arredondo said he spoke with the Tribune in part to refute the plot police narrative that he was incompetent. He said he borne decisively as one of the first officers to approach on scene but was thwarted by a classroom door he sure was locked. Arredondo said he then focused his labors on finding a key that would open it, a procedure that took more than 40 minutes.

McCraw, the head of the state police, said last week that the doors were intended so they could not be been locked from the inside.

Officer body camera and school surveillance footage reviewed by the Tribune do not aid some of Arredondo's claims. At no point before officers breachedthe classroom does Arredondo or any new officer try to turn the handles to the doors of the adjoining classrooms where the shooter was.

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