Community members have been calling for Arredondo’s firing since learning he delayed directing officers to confront the gunman — instead spending more than an hour requesting gear and trying to get a key to the room, which is believed to have been unlocked. The crowd erupted into applause when Arredondo’s firing was approved.
The Uvalde native had led the district’s six-member police force since March 2020 and wrote the district’s active-shooter protocols. Per those guidelines, Arredondo should have appointed himself incident commander, but on May 24, he failed to assume that role, a Texas House committee probe into the massacre concluded. He also mistakenly assessed the situation as a barricaded subject, rather than an active shooter who needed to be immediately confronted.
The Texas House report noted there were nearly 400 officers at the scene — including 149 from U.S. Border Patrol and 91 from the Texas Department of Public Safety — any one of whom could have taken the lead but did not. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the worst U.S. school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in Newtown, Conn.
Arredondo, 50, defended his actions to House investigators, claiming he was just one responding officer and did not see himself as incident commander. He did not know what was happening inside the classroom, he said, and did not have adequate communication with law enforcers outside the building or down the opposite hallway.
Arredondo resigned his city council seat after being sworn in days after the shooting. School district leaders had placed him on administrative leave but since the release of the Texas House investigation, signaled they would fire him.
Neither Arredondo nor his attorney, George Hyde, were present at the school board meeting, saying in a 17-page written statement that they had been deprived of the opportunity to participate safely. Hyde accused angry residents of “lashing out” against them and said his client had also received death threats in the aftermath of the shooting.
Arredondo’s legal team contends the district violated the former police chief’s due process rights, claiming officials didn’t share the results of an internal investigation or provide him with a formal complaint letter. Hyde said Arredondo was unaware there were students in the classroom during the shooting and that he’d asked for better fencing, training and equipment over a year before the massacre.
His attorney likened Arredondo’s firing to a quest for vengeance and said his client wanted his job back with full back pay and benefits.
“Naturally, those affected lash out and seek more retribution by identifying a new target to focus their grief on, with the belief that it will help them stop hurting,” Hyde wrote. “Unfortunately, it won’t. ‘Two wrongs do not make a right.’ Retribution will not bring anyone back; it is a hollow reward, and it will only spread more hurt and pain in an unjust and biased manner.”
Relatives of the shooting victims filled the first rows of the Uvalde High School auditorium carrying large photos of their children and wearing the orange and maroon T-shirts that have become synonymous with their grief. They demanded to know why Arredondo hadn’t yet been fired and said healing would not begin until he was out of the job. They pleaded for school officials to terminate the police chief in their presence and not behind closed doors.
A board member read a statute permitting the closed session, and officials walked off the stage as the audience screamed and chanted at them. Texas Department of Public Safety troopers emerged from the edges of the stage as tensions flared.
Once the school board exited, the families commandeered the microphone, and the meeting morphed into an open forum.
“I miss my best friend. His brothers miss him,” said Felicia Martinez, the mother of slain 10-year-old Xavier Lopez. “Three months and we have forever to live. I don’t know how we are going to do that.”
The school massacre has mobilized Uvaldeans channeling their grief and anger to push their community to tackle long-simmering issues. Some, such as Uvalde pediatrician Roy Guerrero, are focused on gun measures. Others, such as parent Adam Martinez, whose young son was at Robb Elementary the day of the shooting but escaped uninjured, are organizing parents to ask school officials tough questions and raise funds for struggling neighbors. Others are finding their voices in activism and possibly running for political office.
Some hoped Arredondo’s firing would provide the community with some sense of accountability. But others said they believe there is still much work to be done to rectify a school system they fault for failing to keep their children safe.
“For me, it’s got to be a clean slate,” said Maria Hernandez, a 37-year-old mother who wants to see a new board installed. “I want Uvalde to heal but at the same time to heal without pushing for any type of change … I don’t think we can afford that anymore.”
The schools chief job was a homecoming for Arredondo, an experienced Texas lawman who was no stranger to danger. He previously worked in the Webb County Sheriff’s Department and at the Laredo Police Department near the border. A recent report from the San Antonio Express-News found Arredondo had been demoted while working for Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar because “he couldn’t get along with people.”
He also served as a police captain in Laredo’s school district where he was involved in stopping a Columbine-inspired threat from two teens. Texas Commission of Law Enforcement records also show he was an Uvalde police officer for 16 years.
But the goodwill and reputation Arredondo had built eroded as families of victims learned more about the police response to the shooting.
“The accountability has to start somewhere,” said Diana Olvedo-Karau who is part of a cadre of residents who have attended nearly every city, county and school board meeting since the shooting, sporting the Uvalde maroon in their wardrobe each time. “We can’t just let the status quo continue.”