Skip to main content

Texas | Uvalde school shooting: Embattled police chief Pete Arredondo fired

A police chief accused of botching the response to the fatal shooting of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, has been sacked.

The local school board voted unanimously to fire Pete Arredondo, who had been on leave since June.

His lawyers said in a written statement that he had been unaware anyone was inside the classrooms with the shooter.

The firing came three months to the day since the attack and two weeks before the new school term begins.

The attack at Robb Elementary School on 24 May was the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade.

Many parents and relatives have expressed deep anger at the police response and there has been growing pressure for law enforcements to be held accountable.

Mr Arredondo has taken the brunt of criticism for officers' 77-minute delay in confronting the teenage gunman, and is the first officer to be dismissed.

Cheering was heard in the auditorium as Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District's board of trustees filed the motion to remove him from his post immediately.

As Wednesday evening's meeting began, some in the audience shouted: "Coward!"

School pupil Caitlin Gonzalez, who survived the shooting, said her message for Mr Arredondo was: "Turn in your badge and step down."

Lawyers for Mr Arredondo - who was not at the meeting - called him "a courageous officer" and his firing "an unconstitutional public lynching".

They said their client, who had led the small police force since 2020, did not think he was the official in charge at the time of the attack.

In a 17-page statement reported by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, the attorneys maintained: "Chief Arredondo did the right thing.

"Any allegation of lack of leadership is wholly misplaced."

The statement also said the school district had failed to carry out any investigation "establishing evidence supporting a decision to terminate" his client.

And it added that Uvalde school officials had put Mr Arredondo's safety at risk by refusing to allow him to carry a weapon to the school board meeting if he were to have attended.

It continued: "The complaint that an officer should have rushed the door, believed to be locked, to open it up without a shield capable of stopping an AR-15 bullet, without breaching tools… is tantamount to suicide."

But an inquiry heard in June that the classroom door was not locked and there was no evidence officers tried to open it.

Texas public safety chief Steven McCraw testified to a state Senate hearing that there were enough police on the scene to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building.

Labelling the response an "abject failure", Mr McCraw also said Mr Arredondo had "decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children".

Mr McCraw's department is also under scrutiny - it had more than 90 state troopers at the scene of the massacre.

Among the parents at Wednesday's meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting.

"Right now, being young, she is having a hard time handling this horrific event," said Mr Torres, a former US Marine.

School officials have said that students will not be sent back to Robb Elementary School when term begins on 6 September and will instead be provided with temporary classrooms elsewhere in Uvalde or virtual schooling.

Mr Arredondo stepped down in July from a city council seat he won shortly before the school shooting, amid angry calls for him to lose that post, too.

Source: BBC News, Staff, August 25, 2022





🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.




Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

Indiana's governor turns down clemency request, says execution planned for Thursday will go forward

Indiana’s governor turned down a clemency request and says an execution planned for Thursday will go forward against a man who killed his girlfriend’s two children in 2010 Indiana's governor turned down a clemency request Monday and said an execution planned for this week would go forward for a man who set a fire that killed his girlfriend's two children in 2010. Gov. Mike Braun said he would follow the Indiana Parole Board's recommendation to let the death sentence stand for Jeffrey Weisheit. “The Indiana Department of Correction will continue preparations to carry out the court-ordered sentence of execution” Thursday, said Braun, a Republican.

Indiana governor rejects brain scans for death row inmate ahead of execution

Gov. Mike Braun is still weighing Jeffrey Weisheit’s clemency request, however. Gov. Mike Braun’s administration will not allow death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit to undergo additional brain scans before his scheduled execution next week. The decision follows weeks of legal efforts by his attorneys to obtain additional medical evidence for his clemency case. Braun’s general counsel, Stephanie Flittner, met with Weisheit’s legal team Wednesday to discuss the testing and his pending clemency request.

Indiana executes Jeffrey Weisheit

An Indiana man who admitted killing his girlfriend's two children was executed early Thursday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled for the same day in the U.S. Jeffrey Weisheit killed the children, ages 8 and 5, by setting fire to his girlfriend's house in the Evansville area in 2010.  The remains of 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and 5-year-old Caleb Lynch were recovered from the ruins of a fire at their home in the Evansville area. Alyssa’s body was in a closet. Caleb’s body was on a mattress, restrained with duct tape. A railroad flare was in his underwear, and another was under his body. The children’s mother, Lisa Lynch, was at work at the time. She was in a relationship with Weisheit, but it was breaking down, investigators said. Weisheit spent 13 years on death row after his conviction. Weisheit died at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The lethal injection started just after midnight, and he was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m., according to Noelle Russell, ...

‘I’m Not Incompetent’ Christa Pike’s execution doctor, Mark Fowler, speaks.

Dr. Mark Fowler knew something was wrong after 45 minutes passed without word from the warden. In most cases, executions take no more than ten minutes. When he was summoned from his waiting room to the chamber next door, he saw 50-year-old Christa Pike, who’d received two lethal doses of pentobarbital that night, strapped to a gurney, gasping for air. “She’s not dead,” Fowler recalls the warden saying. “I thought, Well, in human beings there’s a spectrum of responses to medications and we’ll give it a few more minutes,” he says. Another half-hour passed. Fowler worried she might survive with irreversible brain damage. “She’s going to be in a permanent vegetative state with a quarter-million dollars in medical expenses.” He came back in and diagnosed her as comatose. The deputy commissioner ordered the execution to stop. Now, instead of taking part in Pike’s death, Fowler’s job was to bring her back to life.

USA | 3 states to carry out rare triple execution this week

If all three executions are carried out as planned, it will be the second triple execution in the U.S. this year, reflecting an overall uptick in the death penalty since the beginning of 2025. Three states are planning to carry out a rare triple execution this week on Nov. 5. Indiana is set to execute Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, by lethal injection for the 2010 murders of his girlfriend's two children, 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb. The children were burned alive in their home.

Vigil planned ahead of high-profile Oklahoma inmate's execution

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — After the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency for a high-profile death row inmate in Oklahoma, a local organization is protesting his execution. James Pavatt was sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old Oklahoma City advertising executive and father of two. Evidence presented at Pavatt's trial showed that he began an affair with Andrew's wife, Brenda Andrew, in 2001. Prosecutors argued that the murder was especially cruel and that Pavatt killed Andrew for an $800,000 insurance policy.

Texas | Jury recommends death penalty for man convicted of killing San Benito police lieutenant

A Cameron County jury recommended the death penalty for Rogelio Martinez for killing a San Benito police lieutenant during a police chase in Brownsville.  Martinez stared forward as the judge announced the recommendation. Lt. Milton Resendez's family told Martinez in court that their lives will never be the same.  Resendez's wife and siblings walked past cameras and declined to speak with reporters. Inside the courtroom, where no audio or video recording was allowed, Resendez's sister Jackie raised her voice at Martinez during impact statements. 

Indiana Parole Board hears testimony on clemency for man scheduled for Nov. 5 execution

Jeffrey Weisheit set his house on fire in 2010, killing his girlfriend’s two young children he was watching.  The Indiana Parole Board will now make a recommendation in the coming days to Governor Mike Braun on whether to grant clemency to condemned killer Jeffrey Weisheit.  Jeffrey is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 5 for the 2010 murder of his girlfriend's 2 children in Vanderburgh County. 

US woman who survived botched execution says she's in constant pain

Convicted murderer Christa Pike said Friday that she is in constant pain, a month after surviving a botched execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee. "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said in a statement released by her lawyers. "My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts," she said. "I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul."

François Mitterrand, the Justice Minister Who Sent 45 Men to the Guillotine

The socialist president celebrated for abolishing the death penalty in France sent 45 condemned men to the guillotine when he was Minister of Justice. In French political history, François Mitterrand is the father of the historic victory of May 1981. He remains associated with one of the greatest moral laws of the Fifth Republic: the definitive end of capital executions, carried through with Robert Badinter in the autumn of 1981.