Pete Arredondo, police chief responsible for Uvalde shooting response, completed active shooter training

Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief who led the law enforcement response to the Tuesday mass shooting at an elementary school and prevented officers from confronting the gunman for more than an hour, completed an active shooter training course in December, according to law enforcement records obtained by NBC News.

Arredondo completed an eight-hour "Active Shooter Training Mandate" course on Dec. 17, 2021, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement public records, NBC reported. He completed the same course on Aug. 20, 2020.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said Friday that Arredondo wrongly determined that no more lives were at risk after the gunman fired multiple rounds inside a locked classroom. Arredondo determined that the situation inside Robb Elementary School had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject, McCraw said.

That decision runs counter to broadly accepted doctrine on handling active shooter situations.

"When there is an active shooter, the rules change. ... You don't have time," McCraw said. "You keep shooting until the subject is dead."

Nineteen children and two teachers were shot dead.

Arredondo was not available for comment Saturday. Police, who were guarding Arredondo's home, said he was not home. He did not respond to a note the American-Statesman left at his door.

Arredondo is scheduled to be sworn in as a member of the Uvalde City Council on Tuesday. He was elected to the City Council on May 7.

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Administrators at Uvalde's City Hall also could not be reached for comment.

For Arredondo, patrolling the school district is a hometown job.

Arredondo, 50, graduated from Uvalde High School with the class of 1990, according to the Uvalde Leader News. He got his start in law enforcement at the Uvalde Police Department in 1993, then moved to Laredo around 2010 and served as a commander for the Webb County sheriff’s office for about eight years, according to the Laredo Morning Times.

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He was sworn in as chief of police for Uvalde's school district in March 2020. A few months later, he purchased a home less than 2 miles away from Robb Elementary, records show.

The decision to end the active-shooter response, McCraw said, meant the police chief believed there was time to retrieve keys to the classroom door from a janitor and for a Border Patrol tactical team to arrive.

Nineteen police officers were massed outside the Uvalde classroom, McCraw said.

But for more than an hour, according to a new timeline McCraw provided, the shooter traveled between two classrooms connected by a shared bathroom while students and teachers were calling 911 for help, including a girl who begged, "Please send police now."

Another caller reported that eight or nine students were still alive about a half-hour before the Border Patrol team entered the classroom behind shields and shot the 18-year-old gunman dead at 12:50 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo set to join City Council