Uvalde school police chief set for firing on Saturday: report

The man blamed for law enforcement’s failure to stop the Uvalde school shooting is likely to be fired on Saturday, according to a report.

Pete Arredondo, Uvalde’s school district police chief and purported on-site commander, will have his fate decided at a school board meeting, CNN reported, citing unnamed sources.

One source told CNN that the board is expected to fire Arredondo. The chief was placed on leave in late June. The school board faced apoplectic criticism at a meeting on Monday because Arredondo has not been fired yet.

Arredondo has consistently denied that he was on-site commander on May 24 when a gunman stormed into Robb Elementary School and massacred 19 students and two teachers in a classroom.

Heavily armed cops from various state and federal agencies waited 77 minutes before storming the classroom and killing Ramos. A Texas state legislature report notably did not fault any single person for that delay, calling it a “systemic failure” in which apparently no one was in charge.

Two cops — Arredondo and Mariano Pargas, Uvalde’s acting police chief on the day of the shooting — have been placed on leave. No other officers have faced public consequences.

Nearly 400 officers were at the school that day, and high-ranking members of multiple agencies were on the scene, but no one took command, according to the Texas legislature report.

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, laid the blame squarely at Arredondo’s feet when he claimed, “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”

The Department of Public Safety announced Monday that it’s conducting its own review of the shooting response.