AUSTIN, Texas — The former police chief of the Uvalde, Texas, schools asked a judge on Friday to dismiss criminal charges filed against him over law enforcement’s slow response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School Shooting in which 19 students and two teachers were killed.
In a motion filed in a Uvalde court, attorneys for Pete Arredondo question whether the 10-count child abuse and abandonment charge applies to the former chief, who has been described as the “incident commander” on the scene, like nearly 400 federal, state and local officials. waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill the shooter in a classroom.
Arredondo has said he should not have been considered incident commander and is “made a scapegoat” to take the blame for the failure of law enforcement that day.
The lawsuit alleges that Arredondo failed to follow active shooter training and made critical decisions that delayed police response as the shooter hunted for victims.
But Arredondo’s lawyers argued that the “imminent danger of death, bodily harm, and physical and mental impairment” was not caused by him, but by the shooter.
“(The) charge itself makes clear that when Mr. Arredondo responded as part of his official duties, an active shooter incident was already in progress,” attorney Paul Looney wrote in the motion, calling the charge “vague, uncertain and indefinite.”
The massacre was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Arredondo was charged in June.
His motion to drop the charges came two days after two teachers and two students were killed in a school shooting in Winder, GeorgiaIn that case, school security officers quickly confronted a teenager who is now charged with the murder.
Arredondo, 52, and another former Uvalde school police officer, Adrian Gonzales, 51, are the only law enforcement officers charged in the response to the Robb Elementary shooting. Gonzales faces 29 similar charges, and both have pleaded not guilty.
If found guilty, a person could face up to two years in prison.
The actions and inactions of both Arredondo and Gonzales amounted to “criminal negligence,” the charges say. Terrified students in the classroom with the gunman called 911 while parents pleaded with officers — some of whom could hear gunfire as they stood in a hallway — to go inside.
