UCISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo says he intentionally left his issued communications devices outside Robb Elementary before entering the school in pursuit of shooter Salvador Ramos.
After two weeks of silence punctuated by allegations of non-cooperation, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo offered his account of the events inside Robb Elementary on May 24, which saw 18-year-old Salvador Ramos use an assault rifle to kill 19 students and two teachers over the course of an hour while responding officers waited for resources.
Arredondo told the Texas Tribune’s James Barragan and Zach Despart that he dropped his police and campus radios outside the school seconds after arriving at the northeast entrance of Robb Elementary, stating that he believed the tools would slow him down while responding to the shooter. Arredondo said that one of the radios had a “whiplike antenna” that would hit his side as he ran. Another he claimed was likely to fall off his tactical belt.
“My mind was to get there as fast as possible, eliminate any threats, and protect students and staff,” Arredondo told the Tribune.
The chief pinned the blame for the 77-minute span between his arrival at the school and the elimination of Ramos primarily on officers’ inability to find the correct key to the door of the classroom in which the shooter had locked himself. Over the course of the attack, he says he was given two different key rings to try.
“Each time I tried a key I was just praying,” Arredondo said. However, few elements of Arredondo’s version of events at Robb Elementary that day have been confirmed by other officers and personnel in the hallway with him.
The Tribune’s report includes claims from the police chief that he had no idea he was in charge of the police response inside the school. Arredondo denied previous reports from The New York Times that stated the group of officers that ultimately killed Ramos had been ordered to stand down before making their move against the shooter. The chief claims he did not tell these officers to stand down. SOURCE: chron
