Uvalde school police chief identified as commander who decided not to breach classroom

At a news conference Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw said the person who made the decision not to breach the Uvalde elementary school classroom where a gunman was shooting children and teachers was the school district police chief, calling it the “wrong decision” to not engage the gunman sooner.

The Uvalde School District Police Chief is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.

"A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation," McCraw said of the incident commander's "thought process" at the time.

Pressed by reporters if Arredondo was on the scene during the shooting, McCraw declined to comment.

Arredondo is identified on the Uvalde School District website as the police chief and was introduced as the police chief at news conferences on Tuesday in the hours following the shooting at Robb Elementary.

At the news conferences, Arredondo stated the gunman was deceased, but provided little other information on the massacre, citing an “active investigation” and taking no questions from those gathered.

CNN attempted to reach Arredondo at his home on Friday, but there was no response.

Arredondo has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience, according to the school district, and he was recently elected to a seat on Uvalde’s city council.

A board of trustees for the school district approved Arredondo to head the department in 2020. The district’s superintendent, Hal Harrell, said in a Facebook post at the time that the board was “confident with our selection and impressed with his experience, knowledge, and community involvement.”

Arredondo told The Uvalde Leader-News after his appointment that he was happy to return to work in his hometown and that he wanted to emphasize education and training at the police department. “We can never have enough training,” he told the newspaper.

In March, Arredondo posted on Facebook that his department was hosting an “active shooter training” at Uvalde High School in an effort to prepare local law enforcement to respond to “any situation that may arise.” A flyer for the event he posted stated that topics covered would include priorities for school-based law enforcement and how to “stop the killing.”

Arredondo previously served as a captain at a school-district police department in Laredo, Texas, and in multiple roles at the Uvalde Police Department.