The criminal case against former Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo will move ahead after a judge’s ruling Thursday.
Arredondo attempted to have all 10 charges against him dismissed, but Judge Sid Harle rejected his motion and set a trial date for Oct. 20, 2025.
In a rare situation, Arredondo was charged earlier this year with 10 counts of child endangerment for the disastrous non-response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022. At the time, Arredondo was chief of the Uvalde school district’s small police department. An officer in the department, Adrian Gonzales, was also charged.
Arredondo has claimed that he has simply been picked as the scapegoat among hundreds of officers from various agencies who were on the scene in Uvalde but waited more than 70 minutes before storming a classroom and killing 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos. Two teachers and 19 children were killed in the massacre.
Charging documents argue that Arredondo did not follow standard active-shooter procedures and made the key decisions that slowed the police response. His attorneys have argued that Ramos presented the danger, not Arredondo.
“Arredondo did nothing to put those children in the path of a gunman,” defense attorney Matthew Hefti said Wednesday.
Gonzales’ defense team said they would seek a trial outside Uvalde, a small community with about 15,000 residents. The two cases have been prosecuted together so far.