The officer in charge of coordinating the police response to the Uvalde, Texas massacre where 19 children and two teachers were killed in a school shooting, was fired on Wednesday, according to US media.
The Uvalde school board voted unanimously to terminate the district police chief’s contract, Pete Arredondo, the Texas Tribune reported.
(Also read: Uvalde: report reveals “serious errors” by the authorities in the shooting)
The state’s public security chief had previously said that Arredondo “put the lives of officials before that of children” amid the shooting.
The Uvalde massacre, which occurred at Robb Elementary School on May 24, is the nation’s worst recorded mass shooting in a decade.
The police came under intense scrutiny for their handling of the situation, as more than a dozen officers waited for around an hour outside the classrooms where the massacre of the children was taking place before entering the classrooms and gunning down the aggressor.
Arredondo was removed from his position as chief of police for the school district of
Uvalde on June 22, although he had not relinquished that position and still held the title until now.
(You may be interested in: Shooting in Uvalde: videos of police inaction during the massacre are revealed)
Arredondo’s suspension came just a day after Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw testified before a Texas Senate committee and said Arredondo made “terrible decisions” while the massacre was taking place.
“The lack of leadership may have contributed to the loss of life,” Texas lawmakers also noted.
According to McCraw, there were enough police officers to respond to the shooting just three minutes after the perpetrator, Salvador Ramos, entered the school through a door. However, the armed policemen waited in the corridor for 77 minutes while the assailant carried out the massacre in two of the classrooms.
(Also: Uvalde: police director suspended for delays in attending the shooting)
Arredondo asked earlier Wednesday for the suspension to be lifted, in a statement from his attorney.
“Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own public, illegal and unconstitutional lynching, and respectfully asks the board for his immediate reinstatement, with all payments and benefits in arrears, and to file the complaint as unfounded,” said attorney George Hyde in a statement.
Lack of leadership may have contributed to loss of life
The US government is investigating the police response and it is not yet known why it took so long for officers to confront the attacker. The investigation is expected to offer more details about the communication between the different police forces.
(Keep reading: The painful account of the teacher who survived a Texas school shooting)
Arredondo, who was the chief of the police force in charge of schools in
Uvalde tried to defend himself in an interview with the Texas Tribune newspaper, in which he claimed he did not know he was in charge of the shooting response and had assumed another police force had taken over.
The Uvalde shooting is the second deadliest in a school in the last decade in the US, after the one that occurred in 2012 at the Sandy Hook school in Newton, Connecticut, where 26 people lost their lives.
In June, US lawmakers passed the first major gun control legislation in nearly 30 years, less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to bear arms.
*With information from AFP and EFE
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