Uvalde Report: 376 Officers Rushed to the School and Had to Wait Until Ordered Inside
The Uvalde school shooting report reveals that 376 law enforcement personnel arrived at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in response to reports of a shooting, but it was over an hour until law enforcement was ordered to go inside.
The Associated Press noted, “Nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school, but ‘egregiously poor decision-making’ resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman who took 21 lives was finally confronted and killed.”
The report from the special Texas House Panel indicates that among the 376 law enforcement personnel who responded, 149 of them were United State Border Patrol agents and 91 of them were Texas Department of Public Safety officers.
The rest of the law enforcement responders included personnel from the following agencies:
25 Uvalde Police Department
16 San Antonio Police Department (SWAT)
16 Uvalde County Sheriff ’s Office
14 Department of Homeland Security – HIS
13 United States Marshals
8 Drug Enforcement Agency
7 Frio County Sheriff ’s Office
5 Kinney County Sheriff ’s Office
5 Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District
4 Dilley Police Department
4 Zavala County Sheriff ’s Office
3 Medina County Sheriff ’s Office
3 Sabinal Police Department
2 City of Uvalde Fire Marshals
2 Pearsall Police Department
2 Texas Parks and Wildlife
2 Uvalde County Constables
2 Val Verde County Sheriff ’s Office
1 Frio County Constable
1 Southwest Texas Junior College
1 Zavala County Constable
The report notes that Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo was convinced the attacker had barricaded himself, ceasing to be an “active shooter,” and for that reason an “active shooter-style response” was not maintained.
Arredondo told the special Texas House Panel:
[W]hen there’s a threat … you have to visibly be able to see the threat. You have to have a target before you engage your firearm. That was just something that’s gone through my head a million times … .[G]etting fired at through the wall … coming from a blind wall, I had no idea what was on the other side of that wall. But … you eliminate the threat when you could see it. … I never saw a threat. I never got to … physically see the threat or the shooter.The report indicates that Arredondo “effectively conceded his error” when confronted with the reality that injuries and/or fatalities were still occurring at the point in which he initially thought it was a barricade situation.
Arredondo said, “I guess, if I knew there was somebody in there, I would have—we probably would have rallied a little more, to say, ‘Okay, someone is in there.’”
The Texas Tribune notes that Arredondo did not believe he was incident commander that day.
Lt. Mariano Pargas, the acting chief of the Uvalde police department on May 24, has been suspended until an investigation of who was supposed to be in command in completed.
