JULY 2022. Blues Vol 38 No. 7

phone call, officers on the scene
reported that the suspect was
barricaded in a classroom. A dispatcher
asked whether the door
was locked, and an officer replied
that they didn’t know but that
they had a Halligan available. No
such tool was ever used. No one
even brought one into the school
for another 54 minutes.
A standoff had begun. The
gunman fired shots at least three
more times — at 11:40 a.m., 11:44
a.m., and 12:21 p.m. — but officers
held their positions. That was true
even as more police filed in, and
four ballistic shields were carried
into the building over the next 40
minutes.
The officers who entered the
school at that time included DPS
troopers who walked into the
hallway before noon and then left
after seeing how many officers
were already there.
The special agent from DPS
who urged officers to go into
the classroom stayed for six
minutes before leaving to clear
other rooms, rescuing a student
found hiding in a bathroom. More
troopers arrived just minutes or
seconds before the tactical team
from the Border Patrol stormed
the classroom but did not participate
in the breach.
Another officer who entered
the hallway was Ruben Ruiz of
the Uvalde city police. His wife,
teacher Eva Mireles, had called
him on his cellphone and told
him she was bleeding heavily.
“She says she is shot,” he told
the officers on the scene.
The video from inside the hallway
doesn’t capture what Ruiz
did inside the school. But a DPS
official told the Tribune that Ruiz
was soon escorted away by other
officers on the scene.
By 12:01 p.m., the DPS special
agent had returned to the hallway
and offered his urgent assessment:
The situation required
officers to go into the classrooms.
“It sounds like a hostage rescue
situation,” the DPS officer said.
“Sounds like a UC [undercover]
rescue. They should probably go
in.”
A police officer — it’s not clear
whether from the city or school
district — then said, “Don’t you
think we should have a supervisor
approve that?”
“He’s not my supervisor,” the
DPS agent countered before
leaving the hallway to clear other
rooms of children.
THE PAINFUL WAIT CONTIN-
UED
SWAT officers from the city
police arrived on the scene at
around 12:10 p.m., a little more
than a half-hour after the shooter
first entered the school. One
minute later, Arredondo asked for
a master key that would allow
him to unlock classroom doors,
according to the transcripts. It
took about six minutes for a set
of keys to arrive, and the chief
began testing them on a different
classroom door. Soon after,
more gunshots could be heard
from inside the classrooms full of
students.
Arredondo tried to speak with
the shooter but didn’t get a
response. Uvalde’s mayor, Don
McLaughlin, told The Washington
Post that a would-be negotiator,
working from a nearby funeral
home to which the mayor had
rushed, also tried to reach the
shooter, to no avail.
At 12:38 p.m., Arredondo tried
to talk to the shooter. Hearing no
reply, he indicated that the SWAT
team could breach the classrooms
if it was ready.
By then, a long-awaited working
key had been found. Officers
inserted it into the door of room
111, and a tactical unit from the
Border Patrol stormed in. All
that’s audible from the video is a
flurry of gunshots. The team then
exited the room and indicated
that the gunman was dead — 77
minutes after the carnage started.
AN AFTERMATH OF DOUBTS
AND QUESTIONS
With the shooter killed, the
excruciating aftermath began.
The fisheye camera in the hallway
captured a single first responder
standing in the center of the hallway,
his surgical-gloved hands
motioning to others standing behind
him to remain there until all
the officers exited. Once he got
that signal, he directed the team
to move quickly inside rooms 111
and 112. Gurneys and ambulance
backboards suddenly popped into
view.
The first to reach the victims
inside pulled motionless, bloodied
children onto the hallway’s
linoleum flooring as they tried to
assess their vital signs. None of
the children appeared to make a
sound. One child whose still body
was placed on the floor had to be
gently pushed to make room for
others streaming in and out, his
blood leaving a wide swath of
crimson across the hallway floor.
Almost immediately, the questions
about whether police did
the right thing began. State officials
offered contradicting information
in the immediate aftermath.
DPS Director Steve McCraw
told reporters days later that it
was the “wrong decision” not to
breach the classroom sooner.
Law enforcement experts
say Arredondo was the rightful
incident commander, though
they were baffled why he abandoned
his radios, declined to
take charge and lacked access to
classrooms. J. Pete Blair, executive
director of the Advanced
Law Enforcement Rapid Response
Training Center at Texas State
University, dismissed the idea
that the state police, being a far
larger police agency, should have
wrested command from Arredondo
when they arrived on scene.
“The person who should be in
charge is the person who has
the best picture of what’s happening
and also the skill set to
manage what needs to happen,”
Blair said. He added, “Command
exchanges are voluntary. They’re
not forced. [Someone] can’t come
in and say, ‘I’m taking it away
from you.’”
Scrutiny has fallen most intensely
on Arredondo. He defended
his actions in an interview this
month with the Tribune, but many
of his claims are not supported
by the records.
He said he didn’t consider
himself the incident commander
that day and never issued orders
to anyone during the shooting.
Yet at 11:50 a.m., according to
body-camera transcripts, an officer
says, “The chief is in charge.”
Arredondo said he intentionally
left behind his radios, which he
said were cumbersome and had
a habit of not working well from
inside the school, but he did ask
for someone to bring them to him
when he called police dispatch.
He also requested a SWAT team,
snipers and a door-breaching
tool. (It’s not clear if he’d heard
that a Halligan was available.) By
noon, officers had rifles, a Halligan
and at least one ballistic
shield — yet made no attempt
to enter the classrooms for 50
minutes.
In a statement on Thursday,
Arredondo’s lawyer, Hyde, told
the Tribune: “The chief has requested
that no further comment
be made until all the information
is collected and evaluated to
minimize misinformation, which
serves no one. I must honor that
request. Further, the D.A. must
present the police shooting in this
matter to a grand jury, so there is
also a criminal investigation underway,
which he must respect.”
The district attorney did not respond
to a request for comment.
“At this point it’s clear that a
multitude of errors in judgment
combined to turn a bad situation
into a catastrophe,” said Katherine
Schweit, a former FBI agent
who co-authored the agency’s
foremost research on mass
shootings. “The law enforcement
rarely thinks their response is
textbook, [but] I can’t think of another
incident in the United States
where it appears so many missed
opportunities occurred to get it
right.”
But law enforcement officers
have particularly homed in on
Arredondo’s search for keys. It
may never be known whether
that insistence on obtaining a key
was necessary as lives hung in
the balance.
The classroom doors are supposed
to lock automatically, but
from the start, the shooter could
be seen walking unobstructed
into the room and then darting
easily in and out at least three
times. The footage caused some
authorities who watched it to
question whether the doors were
ever locked.
Through his lawyer, Arredondo
told the Tribune in a June 9 email
that the doors were checked: “My
memory is that the team on the
north side of the hallway tried
room on their side, which would
be room 112 and I tried to open
room 111 within minutes of arriving
on the scene. We both took
the sprayed gunfire through the
walls.” But authorities have seen
no video so far that confirms that.
EDITOR: As we went to press, the
The Uvalde school district placed
Arredondo, 51, on administrative
leave on June 22, the day after Department
of Public Safety Director
Steve McCraw told a state Senate
committee that police officers
under the command of Arredondo
could have ended the shooting
within minutes of arriving, but the
chief made “the wrong decision”
not to do so.
Arredondo also resigned from
the Uvalde City Council. The
Uvalde Leader-News first reported
Arredondo’s decision to resign
the city on Saturday July 1st, and
released an unsigned statement
that said officials learned of
Arredondo’s intentions through the
Leader-News article but had not
received formal notice from him
even though resigning was “the
right thing to do.” An hour later,
the city said it received Arredondo’s
resignation letter and publicly
released it.
“After much consideration, it is
in the best interest of the community
to step down as a member
of the City Council for District 3
to minimize further distractions,”
Arredondo wrote in the letter. “The
Mayor, the City Council, and the
City Staff must continue to move
forward to unite our community,
once again. God bless Uvalde.”
Our suggestion, move the hell
out of Uvalde and give the community
time to heal.
20 The BLUES The BLUES 21