Tuesday 7 June 2022 10:19 PM Uvalde Mayor holds meeting to reissue declaration of local state of disaster ... trends now
The mayor of Uvalde, Texas, held an emergency city council meeting on Tuesday afternoon to reissue the city's declaration of a local state of disaster in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting.
Conspicuously absent from the meeting were any law enforcement officers or detectives, including Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police chief Peter Arredondo, who has come under fire for his allegedly botched handling of the police response.
While answering questions from reporters, Mayor Don McLaughlin expressed frustration over being frozen out of investigations into the shooting that killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers on May 24, but said he has 'full confidence' in local police.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin extended the city's declaration of a local state of disaster at an emergency city council meeting on Tuesday afternoon
McLaughlin took questions from reporters after the meeting, who grilled him on the police response to the shooting, and authorities' transparency in the aftermath
After a prayer and a recitation of the pledge of allegiance, the council voted unanimously to reissue the local state of disaster declaration, extending the city's access to state recovery services.
'It enables us to still have these state services here to get counselors here for these families, whatever they need,' McLaughlin said. 'Whatever assets these families need, or whatever assets are needed in the community, that we will have that ability to ask the state for it and it will be here.'
Alfred Garza III, the father of one of the victims of the mass shooting, attended the city council meeting
The Uvalde city council held a prayer and recited the pledge of allegiance
