By JIM VERTUNO
The college district police chief who served as on-site commander throughout final week’s lethal capturing in Uvalde, Texas, stated Wednesday that he’s speaking every day with investigators, contradicting claims from state regulation enforcement that he has stopped cooperating.
In a quick interview, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo advised CNN that he’s talking recurrently with Texas Department of Public Safety investigators.
“I’ve been on the phone with them every day,” Arredondo stated. The chief has been the main target of ire in the neighborhood and past over allegations that he delayed sending officers into the varsity on May 24, believing that the gunman was barricaded inside adjoining school rooms and the capturing had morphed right into a hostage scenario.
Nineteen kids and two lecturers died within the assault at Robb Elementary School, the deadliest college capturing in almost a decade. Funerals started this week, and U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona attended Wednesday’s providers for instructor Irma Garcia, who was killed within the assault, and her husband, Joe Garcia, who died of a coronary heart assault two days later.
The district introduced Wednesday that college students and employees wouldn’t return to that campus, although plans have been nonetheless being finalized on the place the lower than 600 college students would attend courses within the fall.
Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez stated Wednesday that his workplace is working with state and federal businesses to request upwards of $45 million in federal funding for the varsity.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, its School Emergency Response to Violence, referred to as Project SERV, “funds short-term education-related services” to assist academic services “recover from a violent or traumatic event in which the learning environment has been disrupted.”
Gutierrez stated he’s unaware of any plans to tear down Robb Elementary however that funds obtained via this system by different colleges have historically been used to rebuild.
State officers have stated police waited for greater than an hour outdoors the classroom the place Salvador Ramos, 18, opened hearth, regardless of repeated pleas from kids calling 911 for assist. At one level there have been as many as 19 officers within the hallway, Steven McCraw, the top of the Texas Department of Public Safety, stated.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin advised media retailers in a Wednesday interview that he’d arrived on the funeral house throughout the road from the varsity about quarter-hour after “the first call” got here that Ramos had crashed his truck close by. McLaughlin stated that whereas on the funeral house, he was standing close to an official he recognized solely as “the negotiator.” He stated that individual unsuccessfully tried to achieve the gunman by way of cellphone.
“His main goal was to try to get this person on the phone,” McLaughlin stated within the interview with Telemundo San Antonio and The Washington Post. “They tried every number they could find,” however the gunman didn’t decide up the cellphone.
Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety, stated Tuesday that Arredondo had not responded to DPS requests for 2 days, whereas different officers within the Uvalde metropolis and colleges police departments proceed to sit down for interviews and supply statements.
Arredondo has not responded to a number of requests for remark from The Associated Press. Considine advised AP Wednesday that Arredondo had not responded to Texas Rangers’ requests for follow-up interviews as of Tuesday. The Texas Rangers — the investigative arm of the Department of Public Safety that focuses on main crimes — haven’t commented on Arredondo’s insistence he was in common contact with DPS.
The Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, which represents law enforcement officials, has urged its members to cooperate with “all government investigations” into the capturing and police response, and endorsed a federal probe by the Justice Department.
The complicated and typically contradictory info launched within the week for the reason that lethal capturing continued Tuesday with the revelation that the outside door utilized by the gunman was not left propped open by a instructor, as police beforehand stated.
They have now decided that the instructor, who has not been recognized, propped the door open with a rock, however then eliminated the rock and closed the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus, Considine stated. But, Considine stated, the door that was designed to lock when shut didn’t lock.
Since the capturing, regulation enforcement and state officers have struggled to current an correct timeline and particulars of the occasion and the way police responded, typically offering conflicting info or withdrawing statements hours later. State police have stated some accounts have been preliminary and will change as extra witnesses are interviewed.
On Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state to conduct in-person college district safety audits, together with random, unannounced “intruder detection” visits to campuses “to find weak points and how quickly they can penetrate buildings without being stopped.”
“This will improve accountability and ensure school districts are following the plans they create,” Abbott stated in a letter to the top of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University. Texas has greater than 1,200 college districts, based on the Texas Education Agency.
Abbott additionally requested prime lawmakers to convene a legislative committee to look at and make suggestions on “school safety, mental health, social media, police training, firearm safety and more.” The subsequent Texas legislative session is scheduled for January 2023, though some lawmakers have urged Abbott to name a particular session in response to the capturing.
After earlier mass shootings on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe High School and a Walmart in El Paso, Abbott convened “roundtable” discussions, typically involving survivors and victims’ households.
After the 2018 capturing at Santa Fe High School, lawmakers in 2019 authorised $100 million for colleges to enhance campus security with steel detectors, car obstacles, shooter alarms methods and different security measures. They additionally allowed extra lecturers to hold weapons on campus and be skilled in campus shooter response.
But Abbott and state lawmakers resisted requires stricter gun possession measures. In 2021, Abbott signed into regulation a measure that permits individuals 21 and older to hold handguns with no license or coaching. In Uvalde on Wednesday, Ramos’ mom was denied service on the drive-thru. Adriana Reyes then walked into an adjoining comfort retailer the place the cashier stated she wouldn’t be served.
She declined to talk with an Associated Press reporter on the scene, saying: “I don’t want to be rude but I don’t want to say anything.”
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More on the varsity capturing in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Uvalde; Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”