Uvalde school shooting: Former district police chief gets 2027 court date

UVALDE, Texas - A court date has been set for former Uvalde CISD police chief Pete Arredondo, more than four years after the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School.

The Latest:

Arredondo's court date has been set for February 22, 2027, according to his attorney's office.

He faces 10 counts of abandoning or endangering a child. He was indicted in June 2024 and pled not guilty in July 2024.

Arredondo has previously tried to get the charges dismissed, his attorney claiming the indictments were "vague, uncertain, and indefinite" and didn't state how his specific actions placed the victims in imminent danger but instead described how they were already in imminent danger by the shooter.

However, a judge refused to throw out the charges.

Arredondo has also filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the federal government is blocking key witnesses from Customs and Border Protection from testifying at his criminal trial.

He claims the testimony of 19 CBP officers who also responded to the shooting, will show they acted based on their training and experience and not because of the inaction of Arredondo. Arredondo's attorneys claim the testimony is critical to his defense of the claim he delayed police response.

He had reportedly sent a formal request for their testimony in February, but CBP declined, saying the officers were not the only source of the information and that allowing this could result in "testimony related to confidential law enforcement techniques."

Adrian Gonzalez trial

Dig deeper:

Arredondo is one of two former Uvalde CISD officers who are the only law enforcement officers to date to face criminal charges related to the shooting.

Adrian Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of abandoning or endangering a child at the same time as Arredondo.

After nine days of testimony in Corpus Christi, a jury found Gonzales not guilty on all 29 counts in January.

The state argued that by failing to act, Gonzales endangered the lives of the 19 students who were killed and 10 others who survived the attack. "This case isn't about handing out participation trophies," prosecutors told the jury, emphasizing that the former officer’s inaction had lethal consequences.

However, Gonzales' defense held that he was being used as a scapegoat for a systemic failure involving nearly 400 responding officers. They argued that Gonzales did the best he could with the information he had, claiming he radioed for help and assisted with evacuations.

Robb Elementary School shooting

The backstory:

19 students and two teachers died on May 24, 2022, making the Uvalde mass shooting the deadliest at a U.S. grade school since Sandy Hook almost a decade before and the deadliest in Texas history. 16 people were also injured in the shooting.

The 18-year-old gunman was later killed in a shootout with law enforcement at the scene. 

The victims

19 Robb Elementary students were killed in the shooting.

• Xavier Javier Lopez, 10
• Amerie Jo Garza, 10
• Uziyah Garcia, 8
• Rojelio Torres, 10
• Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10
• Nevaeh Bravo, 10
• Makenna Lee Elrod, 10
• Eliahana 'Elijah Cruz' Torres, 10
• Eliana 'Ellie' Garcia, 9
• Alithia Ramirez, 10
• Jacklyn "Jackie" Cazares, 9
• Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10
• Jailah Nicole Silguero, 11
• Jose Flores Jr, 10
• Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, 10
• Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10
• Tess "Tessy" Marie Mata, 10
• Maranda Gail Mathis, 11
• Layla Salazar, 10

Fourth-grade co-teachers 48-year-old Irma Garcia and 44-year-old Eva Mireles were also killed. Family members said at the time both died trying to protect their students.

It took two-and-a-half weeks for all the victims to be buried, with Amerie Jo Garza buried first on May 31, 2022. Layla Salazar was the last victim to be buried in Uvalde. Uziyah Garcia was later buried in his hometown of San Angelo.

Family members shared photos and names on social media before authorities formally identified the victims.

Two days after the shooting, Irma Garcia's husband Joe collapsed and died from a heart attack after dropping off flowers at her memorial. The couple, who would have been married 25 years the month after the shooting, were buried together and left behind four children.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit online archive of gun violence incidents since 2013, 11 children, two adults, and three law enforcement officers were also injured in the shooting. The last injured victim was released from a San Antonio hospital more than two months after the shooting.

The shooting

On the morning of May 24, 2022, the gunman reportedly shot his grandmother in the face at their home, then drove to the school and crashed his pickup truck into a concrete ditch behind the school.

Two funeral attendants at the Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home across the street told authorities they had witnessed the crash and walked towards it, seeing a man dressed in all black beside the passenger door. 

The pair retreated when they saw the man, later identified as Ramos, putting a magazine into a rifle. Ramos then fired multiple times at them, according to authorities.

The gunman then entered the school through a door that hadn't locked when a teacher pulled it shut. He entered a classroom with a broken door lock and then began firing into rooms 111 and 112, shooting more than 100 rounds. Students inside the classrooms called 911 multiple times asking for police to respond.

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Authorities originally released a timeline of events, saying that nearly 20 officers were in the hallway outside for more than 45 minutes before a master key was used to open the door and officers confronted and killed the gunman. However, the Texas House and Senate investigations and committee hearings later revealed a different version of events.

It took 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 8 seconds from when police made entry into the school to the time they confronted the gunman and killed him, according to a timed DPS log released in June 2022.

The investigation

The police response sparked outrage and investigations for months following the shooting, including from the Texas Legislature, the Justice Department, and Congress.

Texas State University's Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center released an initial report in July 2022, which alleged there were several missed opportunities to engage or stop the gunman before he entered the school.

Then-Uvalde Mayor, now State Rep. Don McLaughlin later disputed the report, saying that no Uvalde police officer saw the gunman prior to him entering the school or had any opportunity to take a shot at him. 

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The week after the shooting, then-Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan established an investigative committee to look into what happened in Uvalde. The three committee members were tasked with collecting and analyzing evidence from law enforcement, making comprehensive findings, and reporting their conclusions.

The committee released an initial 77-page report the following month, citing "systemic failures" that created a chaotic scene that lasted more than an hour before the gunman was killed. The report was also the first to criticize not only local authorities, but state and federal law enforcement for the "bewildering inaction" of officers on scene. 

The report followed weeks of closed-door interviews with more than 40 people, including witnesses and law enforcement.

In total, 376 law enforcement officers — a force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo — descended upon the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene, says the Texas Tribune. The group was devoid of clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman, the report says.

The report also came shortly after a nearly 80-minute hallway surveillance video published by the Austin American-Statesman publicly showed for the first time a hesitant and haphazard tactical response, says the Tribune.

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The report also sparked an internal review by Texas DPS into the actions of state police as its findings put more than 90 state troopers at the school during the shooting. 

Before this, then-Texas DPS director Steve McCraw called the law enforcement response an "abject failure," but placed more of the blame on then-Uvalde CISD police chief Pete Arredondo, who he described as the incident commander. According to the Texas House report, Uvalde CISD's own active shooter plan also identified Arredondo as the incident commander.

Arredondo later told the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself the person in charge, but rather a frontline first responder and had assumed someone else had taken control. He also stated at the time that he had intentionally left behind both his police and campus radios.