“From the beginning of this horrible event, I shared that the district would wait until the investigation was complete before making personnel decisions,” Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell mentioned in an announcement.
“Today, I am still without details of the investigations being conducted by various agencies. Because of 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 on this date,” he mentioned.
“He failed us,” Arreola mentioned of Arredondo to councilmembers. “Do not make the same mistake he made and fail us too. Go forward and make it right … please, please, we’re begging, get this man out of our lives.”
Arreola spoke with NCS Wednesday concerning the ache of shedding 10-year-old Amerie in addition to the next fallout, with preliminary particulars from investigations indicating that extra might have been carried out sooner.
“We have to speak for all these children, all these families. We have to make things right, we need to get down to the bottom of everything that has happened and find out the truth.”
“I just don’t get how you can hear these kids crying and asking for help, but you’re scared to enter because your commander doesn’t want you to go in,” he mentioned.
Parents, together with himself, “were right outside” the school. “I was trying to get in, I was put into handcuffs,” he mentioned, distraught that police he entrusted “didn’t save my daughter or any of the other kids.”
Arredondo testified to a Texas House committee behind closed doorways on Tuesday relating to the day of the taking pictures and didn’t remark publicly. NCS has reached out to Arredondo’s lawyer for remark.
Uvalde mayor calls out DPS director
While Arredondo has obtained the lion’s share of public criticism for the way police dealt with the disaster, the mayor of Uvalde was fast to level out Tuesday that he believes different legislation enforcement companies additionally want to be held accountable and supply updates to metropolis officers.
In pointed remarks on the metropolis council assembly, Mayor Don McLaughlin accused DPS director Col. Steven McCraw of shirking his division’s accountability and famous that officers from at the very least eight legislation enforcement companies had been inside Robb Elementary throughout the taking pictures.
“Col. McCraw has continued to — whether you want to call it — lie, leak, mislead or misstate information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response. Every briefing he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on-scene that day,” McLaughlin mentioned.
McLaughlin additionally decried leaks from unnamed sources he mentioned had been supposed to shift blame over police response away from sure companies and extra towards native legislation enforcement.
“Col. McCraw has an agenda and it is not to present a full report on what happened and give factual answers on what happened to this community,” the mayor mentioned, including he was meant to obtain a each day briefing from authorities for the reason that day after the taking pictures however none has been offered.
NCS has reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety for remark.
NCS’s Jamiel Lynch, Matthew J. Friedman, Amanda Musa, Eric Levenson, Christina Maxouris, Rosalina Nieves, Andy Rose and Amy Simonson contributed to this report.