AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The former Uvalde, Texas, schools police chief asked a judge on Friday to throw out the criminal indictment filed against him over the slow law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
In a motion filed in a Uvalde court, Pete Arredondo’s lawyers question whether the 10-count indictment on child endangerment and abandonment charges applies to the former chief, who has been described as the on-site “incident commander” as nearly 400 federal, state and local officers waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill the shooter in a classroom.
Arredondo has said he should not have been considered the incident commander and has been “scapegoated” into shouldering the blame for law enforcement failures that day.
The indictment alleges Arredondo did not follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response while the gunman was “hunting” victims.
But Arredondo’s attorneys argued that “imminent danger of death, bodily injury and physical and mental impairment” was not caused by him, but by the shooter.
“(The) indictment 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 indictment “vague, uncertain and indefinite.”
The massacre was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Arredondo was indicted in June.
His motion to dismiss the charges came two days after two teachers and two students were killed at a school shooting in Winder, Georgia. In that case, school security officers quickly confronted a teenager who is now charged in the killings.
Arredondo, 52, and another former Uvalde schools police officer, Adrian Gonzales, 51, are the only law enforcement officers who have been charged for the response to the Robb Elementary shooting. Gonzales faces 29 similar charges, and both have pleaded not guilty.
The charges carry up to two years in jail if convicted.
The actions and inactions by both Arredondo and Gonzales amounted to “criminal negligence,” the indictments said. Terrified students inside the classroom with the shooter called 911 as parents begged officers — some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway — to go in.