A disgraced former police chief facing charges over his bungled response to the deadly 2022 Uvalde school shooting said Wednesday that he had been “made a scapegoat” for the massacre that left 21 people dead.
Pete Arredondo maintained that he and his officers quickly stormed into Robb Elementary School, even though it was revealed that hundreds of police officers had been waiting and confronting the juvenile shooter for over an hour while he went from room to room targeting children.
“I was made a scapegoat from the beginning,” Arredondo said. He said in an interview with CNN It aired on Wednesday.
Arredondo and former officer Adrian Gonzalez were indicted by a grand jury in June on child abandonment and child endangerment charges, making them the only two people charged in the tragedy.
Days after the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Commissioner Col. Steve McCraw identified Arredondo as the “incident commander” of a law enforcement response force that included about 400 local, state and federal officers.
Arredondo told CNN he disagreed with that idea, saying an agency with more authority than the Uvalde school superintendent should have set up a command post outside and taken control.
“The guidebook says that an incident commander is not going to be standing in a hallway and taking shots,” Arredondo said. “The incident commander is someone who is not in the danger zone.”
The disgraced former police chief has denied allegations that he ignored live-fire training that caused a 77-minute delay between police arriving on the scene and shooting dead the gunman, who prosecutors argued spent the extra time “searching” for victims.
Arredondo, 52, said police body camera footage would reveal “the lies and the deception,” though he acknowledged he has not seen the footage himself.
“If you look at the body camera footage, you can see there was no hesitation. Myself and the first few officers on scene had no hesitation in going straight into what we call the danger zone and taking the shots,” Arredondo said, noting that the footage also shows he was not wearing his protective vest as officers inside the school considered what to do.
The former police chief said he had not seen the video that sparked national outrage and felt the victims “were my kids too,” adding that he was not informed until days after the shooting that children inside were frantically calling 911 while a large police force loitered outside.
Nineteen fourth-graders and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting by psychopathic gunman Salvador Ramos, 18. Ramos, who was later shot dead by police, had shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face before heading to the elementary school.
In an interview, Arredondo would not acknowledge whether he made any mistakes that day.
“That’s a statement in hindsight. You can think about it all day and doubt yourself. … I know he did the best he could with what he had,” he told CNN.
Arredondo and Gonzalez have pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to act when a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers inside a fourth-grade classroom.
Arredondo is charged with 10 counts of abandoning or endangering a child. According to the indictment, Arredondo failed to recognize a shooting, did not follow his training and made decisions that delayed police response to stop a shooter who was “hunting” the victims.
Gonzalez, 51, was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene and is charged with 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment after he abandoned his training and did not confront the gunman when he heard gunfire while standing in a hallway.
Each charge against Gonzalez and Arredondo carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison if convicted.
With post wire
