Former Uvalde police chief calls for criminal charges to be dismissed

Inset: Peter Arredondo (Uvalde County Sheriff's Department). Background: Reggie Daniels pays his respects at a memorial erected to honor the victims of the school massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on June 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Eric Gay).

The former Uvalde police chief blamed for the slow law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre has asked a judge to drop the charges against him.

Pete Arredondo was charged in June with 10 counts of child endangerment. On Friday, Arredondo's lawyers reportedly filed a motion to dismiss the charges in connection with the massacre that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

As school police chief, Arredondo was named as the scene's commander, although he denies that claim. It took more than an hour for anyone to confront the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, during the massacre. Ramos was eventually shot and killed by Border Patrol agents.

Attorney Paul Looney called the charges in the motion “vague, uncertain and unspecified,” according to the Associated Press. Looney argued that any “imminent threat of death” came from Ramos, not Arredondo. Looney said Arredondo did not have the proper training or resources to confront the shooter.

“He is accused of a crime that is not a crime in Texas. Under the circumstances of that day, it is illegal to prosecute him,” Looney told Houston CBS affiliate KHOU.

Family members of the victims sharply criticized this mood.

“How can he even say those words?” Jesse Rizo, the uncle of 9-year-old victim Jackie Cazares, told the television station. “I don't understand how he can come to that conclusion when he watches the video. He was negligent. He was irresponsible. He didn't do the job he was trained to do. He let the children stay in the room with that monster for 77 minutes.”

More from Law&Crime: 'Failed at every level': Families of Uvalde mass murder victims file $500 million lawsuit against officials

As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors allege Arredondo failed to recognize that an active shooter was on the scene, even though shots were fired and he was informed that a teacher and children had been injured. Prosecutors say he instead wasted valuable minutes by calling a SWAT team and issuing evacuation orders rather than responding to the shooter on the scene first.

Arredondo, the indictment says, allowed an active shooter “who was hunting and shooting children” to continue his carnage repeatedly, and ignored his training for shooting duty by “deciding and explaining to others that he would wait to enter a room occupied by a shooter at Robb Elementary School until the classrooms were evacuated,” the indictment says.

He is also accused of failing to determine whether a classroom door was locked, which caused further delays. He allegedly failed to provide keys or other “burglary tools” for locked classrooms. Prosecutors say he failed to set up a “command center” during the shooting, which would have been of significant assistance to Border Patrol agents who showed up at Robb Elementary School without clear information or instructions.

The grand jury indicted Arredondo in May, but the files were not released until June 28. Shortly after the 2022 shooting, he was placed on leave and then fired after the Uvalde school board voted unanimously to fire him.

Nico LaHood, an attorney for former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, previously told Texas ABC affiliate KSAT that he believes he did not violate any school district policy or state law, but otherwise said it would take time to review the allegations and the underlying evidence.

The grand jury was first convened in January.

In addition to Arredondo, former school police officer Adrian Gonzales is also named in the indictment; he is also accused of child endangerment.

That same month, a damning U.S. Department of Justice incident report on the Rob Elementary School massacre was released.

Arredondo and Gonzales are the first officers to be charged in connection with the shooting.

Brandi Buchman contributed to this report

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Former Uvalde police chief calls for criminal charges to be dismissed

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