Pedro Pete Arredondo, officer behind Uvalde shooting blunder, sworn in to city council

Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the police officer who led the blunder of a response to the Uvalde school shooting, was sworn in to the city council in a secret ceremony. An 18-year-old shooter named Salvador Ramos gunned down 19 children, two teachers, and injured 17 others in a mass shooting in Texas on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.

Arredondo had won a seat on Uvalde’s city council on May 7, 17 days before the shooting. A swearing-in ceremony for him and the other members had originally been set for Tuesday. However, it was cancelled ‘out of respect’ for the grieving families.

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The meeting “will not take place as scheduled,” adding “our focus on Tuesday is on our families who lost loved ones,” Mayor Don McLaughlin said in a statement Monday. 

The 61-year-old , however, has been sworn in privately. 

Arredondo is facing mounting criticism from his community for his agency’s response to one of the country’s worst mass shootings. According to Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the officer believed the shooter had barricaded himself and that the children were not in danger.

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Officials said that the students and teachers begged 911 operators for help as Arredondo told more than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway outside the classroom where all the murders occurred. 

Arredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from high school here. The 61-year-old has spent much of a nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the head police job at the school district.

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“Our parents deserve answers, and I trust the Texas department of public safety [and] Texas Rangers will leave no stone unturned. Our emotions are raw, and hearts are broken,” McLaughlin’s statement read. 

When asked about the shooting, a week after he conducted two pressers, Arredondo told CNN, “We’re going to be respectful to the family. We’re going to do that eventually. Whenever this is done and the families quit grieving, then we’ll do that obviously.”