UVALDE — Pete Arredondo, the former police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, was arrested Thursday, more than two years after the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.
Arredondo was booked into the the Uvalde County Jail on 10 counts of child endangerment, Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco told CBS News in a text message. He was released from custody after posting $10,000 bond, Nolasco said.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that Arredondo and a second officer who responded to the Uvalde shooting were indicted by a grand jury.
In a statement to CBS News Thursday evening, the school district said it “only just learned about the grand jury decision regarding two indictments being issued,” and had “no information separate from what is being reported by the media.”
“As we have done and continue to do, we extend our sincerest sympathies to all who lost loved ones,” Uvalde CISD said. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this challenging situation.”
The alleged indictments reported by the Express-News come over two years after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement officers killed the gunman in a classroom after waiting more than an hour to confront him, which was heavily criticized in the wake of the shooting. Arredondo was fired in 2022, three months to the day of the shooting.
The Justice Department released a hard-hitting report in Janurary on the response by law enforcement to the mass shooting, pointing to a series of “cascading failures” by the police chief and others.
In May, family members of Uvalde school shooting victims reached a $2 million settlement with Uvalde. The city of Uvalde will pay a total of $2 million to the families of the children killed in the shooting and two children who survived, according to a statement from the families’ attorneys.
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