According to reports, the school district police chief, who stopped officers during Tuesday’s chilling massacre, is set to join Uvalde City Council.
According to NBC News, the complicated orders of Officer Pete Arredondo resulted in the slow reaction of at least 19 policemen at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman opened fire and killed 19 students and two teachers.
As Uvalde Leader-News reports, Arredondo was elected to the Uvalde City Council in a municipal election on 7 May, receiving about 70 percent of the vote.
At a news conference Friday, Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, implied Arredondo’s orders, which led to the police force’s slow response to mass shootings.
Arredondo, the police chief for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and oversees eight schools, was not at the news conference.
McCraw, who did not name Arredondo, said the police chief had mistakenly assumed it had become a barricade or hostage situation. The only evidence something had changed was that the shooting had slowed down.
“With the benefit of where I’m sitting now, of course, it wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision,” McCraw said. “There was no excuse for it.”
“The incident commander at the time believed it was a barricaded subject, they had time and there were no children at risk.”
“It was the wrong decision, period. There was no excuse for it.”
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment.
