Former Uvalde school police chief indicted over Texas mass shooting response
- Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the 2022 Texas school shooting, America’s deadliest in a decade
A grand jury in Uvalde, Texas, indicted former school district police chief Pedro Arredondo over the police response to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and two teachers, authorities said on Thursday.
The Uvalde County Sheriff’s office said Arredondo was in custody and was being booked on 10 counts of child endangerment.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been criticised for failures in the response to the shooting on May 24, 2022. Officers left the 18-year-old gunman alone inside a classroom with children for more than an hour while weighing how to confront him.
By the time officers stormed in, the school had become the scene of one of the deadliest shootings in US history.
Another law enforcement officer, Adrian Gonzales, was also indicted by the grand jury, according to local media reports. The sheriff’s department on Thursday said Gonzales had not yet been booked, and said they could provide no details on his situation.