UVALDE, Texas — Facing intense pressure from parents, the school board in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday terminated its school police chief, Pete Arredondo, who directed the district’s police response to a mass shooting at an elementary school in which the gunman was allowed to remain in a pair of classrooms for more than 75 minutes.
The unanimous vote, which Mr. Arredondo, through his lawyer, called “an unconstitutional public lynching,” represented the first direct accountability over what has been widely seen as a deeply flawed police response, one that left trapped and wounded students and teachers to wait for rescue as police officers delayed their entry into the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up.
Cheers broke out in the room as one of the board members, Laura Perez, made a motion: “I move that good cause exists to terminate the noncertified contract of Pete Arredondo, effective immediately,” she said.
Mr. Arredondo, who has led the small police force since 2020, was described by the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety as the incident commander responsible for the delayed response. Mr. Arredondo has said he did not consider himself to be in charge, and an investigative committee from the State Legislature concluded that a number of law enforcement agencies shared responsibility for what it called “systemic failures” in the response.
The school police force is one of several law enforcement agencies whose officers’ conduct during the shooting has been called into question. Inquiries are underway by the City of Uvalde into the actions of the acting police chief on that day, and by the Department of Public Safety into how its own officers responded at the school.
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From the moment the meeting began in the high school auditorium, the tension was palpable. Brett Cross, an uncle of one of the victims, jumped onstage, catching the school board members off guard, and handed them a letter demanding that their deliberations, which they were about to hold behind closed doors, be open to the public.
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“Our babies are dead,” Mr. Cross said. Some in the crowd yelled, “Cowards!” and, “No justice, no peace!”
After taking public comments, the board retreated to a closed session to conduct its deliberations and then returned after about 90 minutes to take the final vote in public.
Several parents and family members of the victims wore shirts with images of the victims, flowers and signs that read “Protect and Serve. Who. Yourself,” a reference to the police response.
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