A grand jury on Thursday indicted former Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo and former officer Adrian Gonzalez for their roles in the failed response to the 2022 Robb Elementary shooting.
The indictments, first reported by the San Antonio Express News, are the first criminal charges filed against law enforcement since the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers.
Victims' families have been calling for police accountability at the local, state and federal level since law enforcement's actions came to light in the days after the shooting.
Three hundred and seventy six officers were on the scene and waited for more than an hour to confront the gunman. That included 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents, 91 DPS troopers, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies and five Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officers.
Arredondo was the presumed incident commander on that day but failed to show incident command training, according to the Department of Justice's critical incident review from earlier this year.
Arredondo and Gonzalez were charged with abandoning and endangering a child, which is a felony.
The Uvalde County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Arredondo turned himself in Thursday afternoon.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not respond to TPR's request for comment on the indictments.
She told the Express-News she could not comment on the indictments beyond thanking the grand jury for its work. "They met for six months. They took a hard look at the case and were very deliberate and thoughtful in all their deliberations," she said.
Adam Martinez is a Uvalde resident and the father of Robb Elementary School shooting survivor. He said he's still processing the news of their indictments.
"He was the incident commander at the time, and it was the right decision. It's just a waiting game now to see who else is going to be indicted. It's a little bit of justice for the 21," Martinez said.
He added that anyone who had training and didn't follow protocol needed to be fired, at the minimum.
"I don't know if there's a number, or how many would make people happy," Martinez said. "But I think this is a huge thing, and it's a start."
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