Sunday 29 May 2022 11:31 PM Uvalde School District Police Chief Peter Arredondo is branded a 'coward who ... trends now
The Uvalde School District Police Chief who changed the status of the Robb Elementary School shooting from an 'active shooter' situation to a 'barricaded suspect' has been slammed as a coward by his own neighbors.
As a result of the change in status, critics claim, police officers stood back for more than half an hour as Salvador Ramos continued to slaughter 19 children and two adults who were locked in the classroom with him.
Some students even continued to call 911 at the time, informing police that Ramos, 18, was still shooting at them.
'Pete Arrendondo is a coward,' his neighbor, Lydia Torres, 56, told the New York Post in the aftermath. 'He didn't do his job. He failed the children.'
Arrendondo, 50, is now under police protection as Texas state investigators probe whether he even had a police radio on him when he made the decision.
But one cop on the scene of the shooting Tuesday has said that Arredondo is wrongly being made a scapegoat.
'It's a lie that Arrendondo told everyone to stand down,' said the anonymous officer. 'It's a lie. And we're all getting death threats. It's a f*****g nightmare.'
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Police Peter Arrendondo has been slammed as a 'coward' by his neighbors
Arrendondo changed the status of the Robb Elementary School shooting from an 'active shooter' situation to a 'barricaded suspect' on Tuesday as Salvador Ramos, 18, locked himself inside a classroom and continued to fire
As a result of the decision police officers stood back for more than half an hour
Worried parents gathered outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center on Tuesday as calls continued to come in from children stuck inside
Col. Steven McCraw admitted at a news conference on Friday that the decision to change the status of the shooting was 'the wrong decision'
The assertation comes after Texas Department of Public Safety head Steven McCraw slammed Arredondo for failing to engage 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, mistakenly believing the teen had finished his killing spree and was hiding out from cops.
But, McCraw said, students continued to make 911 calls while locked in the classroom with Ramos, as Arredondo and his men waited outside the room for more than an hour.
It was revealed Friday that the Uvalde Schools Police Department ignored several protocols from their own active shooter training drills, which they had practiced just two months ago
Eventually, Border Patrol agents who rushed to the scene after hearing the incident unfold on scanners, breached the locked classroom door, with one fatally shooting Ramos.
According to a law enforcement official who anonymously spoke to The New York Times, the agents had been puzzled as to why they were being told not to enter the school and engage the gunman.
McCraw asserted that Arredondo, identifying the district chief by title and not by name, made a miscalculation assuming the active shooter situation had become a barricade event.
'With the benefit of hindsight, from where I'm sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period,' McCraw said.
His decision is now being investigated by state authorities, as cops continue to protect outside his home - apparently upsetting some of his neighbors.
'I do not understand why the police from Uvalde, Texas are guarding Pete Arrendondo's home,' Torres said.
'He is in his home, requesting the police department patrol the area and guard his home day and night. He should come out and speak up,' she said, adding that the parents of the 19 children killed in the
