The former Uvalde schools police chief and another former officer have been indicted over their role in the slow police response to the 2022 massacre in a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
“We began to lose faith in the system. We are happy this has taken place,” said Jesse Rizo, whose niece Jacklyn Cazares was among the students killed. The first U.S. law enforcement officer ever tried for allegedly failing to act during an on-campus shooting was a campus sheriff’s deputy in Florida who didn’t go into the classroom building and confront the perpetrator of the 2018 Parkland massacre. The deputy, who was fired, was acquitted of felony neglect last year. A lawsuit by the victims’ families and survivors is pending.
“I want every single person who was in the hallway charged for failure to protect the most innocent,” Velma Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the teachers killed, said Friday. “My sister put her body in front of those children to protect them, something they could have done. They had the means and the tools to do it. My sister had her body.”
In an interview with the Texas Tribune two weeks after the shooting, Arredondo insisted he took the steps he believed would best protect the lives of students and teachers.