Uvalde School Sheriff Pete Arredondo did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview for the investigation into last week’s mass shooting. 19 children and 2 teachers killed at Robb Primary Schoolaccording to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“Uvalde PD and Uvalde CISD are still collaborating; however, the CISD sheriff has yet to respond to Rangers’ request for a follow-up interview that was conducted a few days ago,” a spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.
In another statement the Statesman, A DPS spokesman clarified that Arredondo did not respond to a request for comment for two days. He also clarified to another source that “a lot” of staff from the Uvalde Police Department and the school district “have conducted interviews and given statements to investigators.”
A spokesperson for the Uvalde Independent School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attempts to reach Arredondo and the Uvalde Police Department on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Arredondo has emerged as the most scrutinized law enforcement official who responded to the disaster caused by Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old who killed 21 people after crashing his truck outside of school last Tuesday. Without naming him, state officials said Friday that as incident commander at the scene, Arredondo was a key player who viewed the ongoing attack as an attack related to ” Obstacle Subject” rather than an active shooter that demands immediate break into the classrooms he has occupied.
Despite a massive police presence at the scene, state law enforcement officials said, and even as young children continued to beg for help from 911 dispatchers, officers working under Arredondo still trying to neutralize the threat. More than an hour after police first arrived on the scene, Border Patrol agents broke into the classroom and killed the shooter.
Among the harshest critics, however, was Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw, who told reporters at a Friday press conference that local police were delaying entry. class where Ramos 18 years old is the “wrong decision”.
“From the benefit of hindsight, from the position I’m sitting in right now, it wasn’t the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was a wrong decision, period, there’s no excuse for that.”
But Arredondo and local police are not the only law enforcement officers fired for the deadly shooting. A Texas DPS spokesman previously confirmed to The Daily Beast that Ramos did not enter the school through a back door that a teacher had opened a few minutes earlier — though McCraw pointed out at a press conference on Thursday. Six.
The spokeswoman said that while the teacher used a rock to hold the door open, she removed it when she ran inside to get her phone and call 911 after seeing Ramos hit a truck on the school grounds.
“She saw the wreck,” said Don Flanery, the teacher’s attorney San Antonio Express-News on Tuesday. “She ran back inside to get her phone to report the accident. She turned while on the phone to 911. The men at the funeral home shouted, ‘He has a gun!’ She saw him jump over the fence, and he had a gun so she ran inside.
A DPS spokesperson said that the teacher eventually ran inside the school again and closed the door behind him. However, the door did not lock behind the teacher and let the 18-year-old gunman enter the school.
“She kicked the rock away when she came back. She remembers pulling the door shut while telling 911 he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door was always supposed to be locked,” Flanery added.
McCraw said Friday that within minutes of Ramos entering the building, the teenager threw “hundreds of rounds” into two of the classrooms adjoining by a bathroom with plugs in. During that time, several local policemen arrived on the scene and were immediately confronted by gunfire – prompting them to decide to call for assistance.
It took a few more minutes before a dozen local officers, who had been crowded together in the school hallways, finally entered the classroom and engaged Ramos, despite hysterical pleas from parents gathered outside the school and children call 911 asking for help.
