US: Wolverhampton police chief fired following slow response to school shooting

The director of the Texas Department of Public Security told the Senate committee that undercover Pedro Aradonto had made “terrible decisions” while wearing the mask.

REUTERS / Marco BelloElementary school shooting ends with 21 dead

School District Police Chief Uvalde (Texas, United States), Pedro “Pete” Arredonto was fired after being criticized for taking too long to respond. Shooting 19 children and two teachers were killed at a school in the city. School District President Hall Harrell announced in a statement that Arredonto was on administrative leave and that another officer would perform his duties. Harrell did not explain why he decided to remove Arredondo, but cited a lack of information about when the results of the police investigation into the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde would come to fruition. “I have decided to put Chief Aradonto on executive leave because of the remaining ambiguity and the lack of an estimate of when I will receive the results of the investigation,” Harrell said. Arredondo and other police officers Texas They were severely criticized for their response to the shooting. The announcement comes a day after Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McGrath testified before a state Senate committee that Aradonto made “terrible decisions” during the assassination.

According to McGrath, there were enough police officers to respond to the shooting three minutes after the gunman, Salvador Ramos, entered the school through a door. However, armed police officers waited in the hall for 77 minutes before the attacker carried out the massacre in two classrooms. The U.S. government is investigating the police response and wants to see why the authorities took so long to confront the attacker. The investigation should provide further details on the communication between the different police forces. Arredondo, the police chief in charge of schools in Uvalde, recently tried to defend himself in an interview with the Texas Tribune, saying he did not know who was responsible for the shooting, and that there was another police force. Action taken. The Uvalde shooting is the second worst school shooting in the United States in decades, after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook High School in Newton, Connecticut, which killed 26 people.

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* With information from EFE