Uvalde school board schedules termination hearing for Chief Pete Arredondo

UVALDE, Texas — Officials with the school board in Uvalde said Tuesday that they will meet next week to discuss the possible termination of school district police Chief Pete Arredondo in the wake of the deadly school shooting that left 21 people, including 19 students, dead earlier this year at Robb Elementary School.

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The board will meet for the discussion at 5:30 p.m. CDT on Aug. 24, KSAT-TV and KTVT reported. The meeting will be open to the public.

Officials have twice before scheduled meetings to discuss terminating Arredondo. In late July, the school board announced a special meeting to debate the potential firing, though it was delayed at the request of the police chief’s attorney. A subsequent meeting scheduled for Aug. 4 was later delayed due to “a scheduling conflict,” according to CNN.

Last month, school district Superintendent Hal Harrell recommended the firing of Arredondo amid criticism of his response to the deadly May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School.

Arredondo was one of the first officers to respond to reports of the shooting, though he failed to take the lead during the law enforcement response, according to a report issued last month by a Texas House committee tasked with investigating the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history. The committee noted in its report that there were no “villains” found during its investigation, attributing issues with the response instead to “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”

Surveillance footage from the scene showed officers in a hallway of the school minutes after the gunman arrived, although they did not confront the shooter for more than an hour. Several investigations into the law enforcement response remain ongoing.

Arredondo has been on unpaid administrative leave since July 22, KENS reported. Earlier in July, Arredondo resigned from his position on the Uvalde City Council.

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