Arredondo, who is Uvalde’s school police chief, said in his resignation letter earlier this month that he was stepping down from the city council position to “minimize further distraction.”
“The mayor, city council and city staff must continue to move forward to bring our community back together,” Arredondo said. In response, the city government said his resignation was “the right thing to do.”
Arredondo’s attorney did not respond to CNN’s previous request for comment following his resignation letter.
The City Council’s move came the same day the Austin American-Statesman newspaper published redacted portions of surveillance video from the day of the shooting. An edited video shows the gunman walking down a hallway with a long rifle. The footage also shows officers approaching the classroom, but then retreating down the hall and taking cover when gunfire is heard. Authorities did not directly confront the shooter until more than an hour later. The area police chief was previously identified by state authorities as the on-scene commander during the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School. His role in the botched police response to the shooting, which killed 19 students and two teachers, has been the subject of intense public scrutiny and criticism. He was placed on leave by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District last month. “Due to the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations, I have made the decision to place Chief Arredondo on administrative leave effective this date,” Superintendent Hal Harrell wrote in a June news release.
During a hearing before the Texas Senate last month, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Stephen McCraw called law enforcement’s response to the attack a “gross failure” and blamed Arredondo.
“Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed personnel wearing body armor to isolate, disperse and neutralize the subject,” McCraw said at the time. “The only thing stopping the corridor of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the field commander who decided to put the lives of the officers before the lives of the children.”
Arredondo told the Texas Tribune in June that he did not consider himself the commander of the incident and suggested another officer took control of the larger response. A new assessment of the law enforcement response released earlier this month, which highlights key problems and errors in the law enforcement response, notes the lack of effective command during the incident. Arredondo was elected to the City Council on May 7, just weeks before the school shooting. He was sworn in privately, without prior notice to the media, a few days after the attack.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, there was applause heard from the audience off-camera after city leaders passed a motion to accept Arredondo’s resignation.
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