This coming Tuesday was supposed to be a day of celebration for Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.
According to a Uvalde City Council agenda, Arredondo — who told officers not to break down a Robb Elementary School classroom door after a shooter barricaded himself and then killed 19 children and their two teachers inside — is scheduled to be sworn in as a member of the Uvalde City Council on Tuesday.
Arredondo was elected to the City Council on May 7.
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Arredondo, who was elected earlier this month, was not available for comment Saturday. Police, who were guarding Arredondo’s home, said he was not home. He did not respond to a note the American-Statesman left at his door.
Administrators at Uvalde’s City Hall also could not be reached for comment.
For Arredondo, patrolling the school district is a hometown job.
Arredondo, 50, graduated from Uvalde High School with the class of 1990, according to the Uvalde Leader News. He got his start in law enforcement at the Uvalde Police Department in 1993, then moved to Laredo around 2010 and served as a commander for the Webb County sheriff’s office for about eight years, according to the Laredo Morning Times.
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He was sworn in as chief of police for Uvalde’s school district in March 2020. A few months later, he purchased a home less than 2 miles away from Robb Elementary, records show.
Arredondo did not attend Friday’s news conference, during which Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said “it was the wrong decision” not to break down the door and confront the shooter inside. McCraw did not refer to Arredondo by name, discussing only his title.
The decision to end the active-shooter response, McCraw said, meant the police chief believed there was time to retrieve keys to the classroom door from a janitor and for a Border Patrol tactical team to arrive.
Nineteen police officers were massed outside the Uvalde classroom, McCraw said.
But for more than an hour, according to a new timeline McCraw provided, the shooter traveled between two classrooms connected by a shared bathroom while students and teachers were calling 911 for help, including a girl who begged, “Please send police now.”
Another caller reported that eight or nine students were still alive about a half-hour before the Border Patrol team entered the classroom behind shields and shot the 18-year-old gunman dead at 12:50 p.m.