Officials in Uvalde are no longer cooperating with the state’s investigation into the shooting at Robb Elementary School, in which 19 children and two teachers were shot dead.
The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force have stopped cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation into the massacre, law enforcement sources told .
The school district’s police chief Pete Arredondo — who made the call to wait for more resources instead of confronting the gunman sooner — has not responded to requests for information in over two days.
Despite this, Arredondo was sworn in as a Uvalde city council member Tuesday night in a private ceremony, which Mayor Don McLaughlin said was out of respect for the families who buried their children that day.
He reportedly decided to stop cooperating with the investigation after the state’s Director of the Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw said the delayed police entry into the school was ‘the wrong decision’ during a news conference on Friday.
‘With the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,’ said McCraw. ‘Clearly there were kids in the room. Clearly they were at risk.’
While 18-year-old Salvador Ramos was barricaded inside the classroom where he 21 people, Arredondo determined that the situation had changed from a threat of an active shooter to a barricaded subject.
For that reason, he believed there was time to retrieve keys to the classroom from the janitor and for the Border Patrol tactical team to arrive and enter the classroom behind shields.
Students were locked inside the classroom with the gunman for over an hour.
Officials continue to clarify the sequence of events that unfolded at Robb Elementary on May 24, prompting the US Department of Justice to launch its own investigation into the response to the shooting.
Funerals for the victims began Monday, and will continue for the next two weeks.
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