The city mayor has declared that Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo will not be sworn in as a newly elected Uvalde City Council member on Tuesday.
According to a meeting agenda available online, Arredondo was elected to the City Council on May 7 and was scheduled to take the oath of office during a special convened City Council meeting on Tuesday. That, according to Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, will not happen.
Authorities Raise Questions on Police Response During Uvalde School Shooting
"Our attention on Tuesday is on our families who have lost loved ones," McLaughlin said in a statement released to USA TODAY. "We begin burying our children tomorrow, the innocent victims of last week's Robb Elementary School killings."
According to Texas officials, Arredondo oversaw the law enforcement response to the Tuesday mass shooting at Robb Elementary School and kept cops from approaching the gunman for more than an hour, raising fresh doubts about whether lives may have been spared. There were 19 pupils and two instructors slain.
It was unclear if Arredondo would be sworn in later or privately. He was one of three council members set to be sworn in on Tuesday. The Texas Rangers have increased their investigation into the police reaction to the incident, and the US Justice Department is also reviewing police activities at McLaughlin's request.
Arredondo, 50, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from high school here, was slated to be sworn in as a member of the City Council earlier this month. He spent most of his nearly 30-year law enforcement career at Uvalde before returning in 2020 to become the school district's chief of police.
When questioned about Arredondo, another woman in his childhood neighborhood burst into tears. The grandmother, who did not want to be identified, stated that one of her grandchildren was present at the school during the shooting but was not injured. Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News earlier this month that he was ready to strike the ground running after being elected to the City Council.
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Texas Town Grieves After Tragic School Shooting
By two law enforcement officials, when the shooter opened fire on schoolchildren, police from other agencies implored Arredondo to let them step in since children were at risk. Because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the probe, the officials talked on the condition of anonymity.
Arredondo began his law enforcement career with the Uvalde Police Department. In a 2020 story in the Uvalde Leader-News on his return to his hometown to assume the school district police chief post, he worked at the Webb County Sheriff's Office and subsequently for a local school system after spending 16 years there, according to The Hill.
Even those who did not lose a child in this little town of 15,000 people lost someone - their closest friend, the young boy down the road who dribbled his basketball in the driveway, the kid who stood on the curb, backpack in hand, waiting for the bus. They can see the empty voids they left behind all over the place.
They will not sit in the bus seats. They won't wear a baseball gloves. They will not skip from their front doors to join the neighborhood game of tag. They will not fish in rivers. Some argue that their proximity is both a benefit and a curse: they may depend on each other to grieve. But every one of them is in mourning.
The mourners left items that these youngsters had treasured and would never see again: a pipe cleaner flower, a crayon wreath, Hot Wheels, a princess crown, a baseball with the words "excellent game," and a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels, KTLA reported.
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