Two months before an armed man killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the then Chief of Police of the School District had to attend training on how to respond to an active shooter, who did not instruct in uncertain terms that the first priority of an “officer is to move and face the attacker.”
When Pete Arredondo, the Chief of Police of the Independent School District of Uvalde at the time of the shooting in May 2022, faced the situation with precision for which his training should have prepared it, did the opposite of what the training instructed would have saved lives, according to a newly published awning of documents of the Uvalde schools.
“Time is the number one enemy during the active response of the shooter,” said a training plan for training. “The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers move immediately to action to isolate, distract or neutralize the threat, even if that means an officer who acts alone.”
More than three years after the shooting and training designed to prevent it, Arredondo continues to fight against a criminal case that alleges that he was responsible for putting students in danger by waiting 77 minutes to face the gunman, who had hidden in the next classroom of fourth grade.
Arredondo declared himself innocent of 10 charges of danger and abandonment of children in the name of injured and surviving children. Its proof date is scheduled for October 2025.
This photo provided by the Uvalde County Sheriff’s office shows Pete Arredondo. Arredondo, former Chief of Police of Schools in Uvalde, Texas.
Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office through AP
“From the benefit of the retrospective, where I am sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, point,” said Texas Public Security Director Steven McRaw to journalists days after the shooting.
The registries of the training of active shooters were included in a Treasury of documents published by the School District of Uvalde on Monday, after a one -year effort to retain documents on the response, security and police training of the school district. After years of applications from the families of the victims, the public and media organizations, including ABC News, the records were published on the eve of the new school year, while prosecutors prepare to bring two former leaders of the School District police, including Arredondo.
Paul Looney, a Arredondo lawyer, told ABC News in a statement: “There is very little to throw any constructive light on what to do next time or who did or did nothing this last time. Much of trying to maintain private and secret information so that they can try to try to try that two officers. Those prosecuted are defective. Constructively, the next time.
“I am not sure if my battle for transparency will really end,” said Gloria Cazares, Jackie Cazares’s mother, 9, who was killed in the massacre. “I need to know everything that led to the death of my daughter and what happened later. Every detail matters. If we cannot obtain justice, the least we deserve is every part of evidence, every record, every truth that has kept us.”
Among the hundreds of published pages, the records suggest that the defective response was not due to lack of training, but despite this. The Texas State Legislature approved a law in 2019 that required school and police officers to participate in an active shot approved within 180 days after employment. One of those training in Uvalde took place on March 21, 2022, two months before the mortal shooting.
“The first to respond to the active scene of the shooter must generally be placed in danger and show unusual courage acts to save the innocent,” the training said. “A first responder who is not willing to place the life of the innocents above their own security should consider another professional field.”
The training also includes material on the defects in the emergency response to the deadly school shooting of February 2018 in Parkland, Florida, where the officers faced criticism for staging outside the building while the shooting was carried out. According to materials, Texas training had the mandate to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring, where an application response of delayed law could contribute to additional victims.
A police officer is saved outside Robb Elementary School in the city of Uvalde, Texas, on May 27, 2022.
Wu Xiaoling/Xinhua through Getty Images
The recently published documents also shed light on the academic and disciplinary history of the late armed man, Salvador Ramos. The 18 -year -old was disciplined by inappropriate behavior at least 18 times between 2015 and 2018, including the intimidation of other classmates, the use of inappropriate and sexual language, and fighting their classmates, according to documents.
Ramos incidents show a clear and documented pattern of low -degree and recurring behavior problems in school, according to documents. His performance was written several times, but there was no clear follow -up to address his needs and help him. His parents were often absent from the process, as the documents show.
His mother Adriana Reyes told the police before the shooting that he was “scared” of his son. Speaking to ABC News after the shooting, Reyes said that his son could be “aggressive” but that he was not a “monster.”
“We all have anger, that some people have more than others,” said Reyes
In November 2015, a disciplinary article said Ramos wrote “I’M Gay” on the back of the works of art of another student, according to the documents. Although he denied it, the student whose document was identified to Ramos as the culprit. When the teacher called Ramos’s mother, “she said that this person is not available. I also tried to call the grandfather’s phone and said that the voice mail is full,” they show the documents.
In March 2018, Ramos was written by absenteeism and was suspended, according to the documents. Also that march was written to “use sexual language ‘after repeatedly [being] They told him to stop. “When a teacher told him to do his job for a teacher, the documents say he showed the” L “sign and was placed under suspension in school.
Ramos was written to draw an “inappropriate image” in a task in May 2018 and received suspension at school, according to records. The same month, a handwritten note in Pink Pen said he was sent to the office because “he refused to do his job. I told him to lower his head for the whole class or went to the office. He decided to go to the office.”
Also in May 2018, Ramos “approached a student and hit him on the arm. Another student reacted by kicking him,” according to the documents. According to the parents’ contact, the documents show that the disciplinary registration said: “There is no answer.”
