UVALDE, Texas — A grand jury indictment of former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) Police Chief Pete Arredondo was unsealed Friday, charging him with 10 counts of Endangering/Abandoning a Child.
Texas law says that a person is guilty of Abandonment or Endangerment of a Child if they intentionally abandon the child in any place under circumstances that exposes the child to an unreasonable risk of harm.
Another former UCISD officer, Adrian Gonzales, was also indicted on 29 counts of Child Abandonment/Endangerment. The indictment says that Gonzales "failed to engage, distract, or delay the shooter" and failed to "act in any way" to stop the shooter. It also says he failed to follow his active shooter training.
Both were booked into Uvalde County Jail and released.
Arredondo was employed as the Chief of Police for UCISD during the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24, 2022. He has been criticized for his role in the response to the shooting. Arredondo had claimed that the gunman couldn't be stopped because the doors to classrooms 111 and 112 were locked. Other evidence did not support his claims.
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Arredondo said that he didn't think he was the incident commander for law enforcement, while Texas Department of Public Safety officials said that he was and that he made the decision to treat the situation as a "barricaded suspect" instead of an active hostage situation.
Nineteen children and two teachers died in the shooting.
Parents and Uvalde residents have been asking for accountability for the officers involved for over a year – a call that grew in July 2022 when video obtained by KVUE showed officers pacing in the hall for more than an hour rather than immediately acting.
Many of those first responders were seen in the hallway for more than an hour before entering the classroom where the gunman was with victims, in what the U.S. Department of Justice said was a response filled with "cascading errors."
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The Uvalde City Council released a report that claimed all Uvalde officers were not at fault for the response.
The grand jury was originally convened by local prosecutor Christina Mitchell in January and has spent nearly six months reviewing a trove of evidence in the case, including both oral and written statements – many from the officers who responded to the shooting.
State law prevents jurors from publicly confirming who received a summons or how many were issued. Nine out of the 12 grand jury members are required to vote for indictment before any can be issued.