Local media reported that former officer Adrian Gonzalez also was indicted. The charges were first reported by the San Antonio Express-News. District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
The officers are the first to face criminal charges in a shooting that has sparked outrage over both the violence of the 18-year-old gunman and the length of time it took police to enter the classroom and shoot him dead. Texas state leaders initially praised the police response but later acknowledged that officers waited 77 minutes before confronting the shooter.
Legal experts said the charges were seen as an unprecedented application of child endangerment laws and that the 10 charges appeared to relate to 10 children who survived the deadly attack that day by playing dead or hiding among the dead.
In January, the Department of Justice released a scathing 575-page report criticizing local police commanders and state law enforcement for not immediately entering the classroom and killing the shooter. Attorney General Merrick Garland said officers’ faster response “could have saved lives.”
Police officers arrived at the school but quickly retreated in the face of gunfire, treating the shooter as a barricaded suspect and waiting for reinforcements. Meanwhile, officers spent about 40 minutes searching for classroom locks, which federal investigators concluded had likely not been locked all along.
From the start, much of the blame was focused on Mr. Arredondo, who was then the head of the Uvalde School District’s police force. An investigation found that Mr. Arredondo had repeatedly told officers to stop entering the classroom because he believed there were other victims in nearby classrooms and that they should be cleared first.
Mr Arredondo defended his response, saying he did not believe he was in charge, but a Justice Department investigation concluded he was the “de facto on-scene commander” and that his authority was insufficient.
Gonzales was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene. He correctly identified the classroom where the massacre was unfolding as that of Eva Mireles, the wife of a Uvalde School District police officer. But Gonzales, who had received active shooter training, told investigators he did not approach the classroom and had difficulty relaying information over his radio.
Mireles was still alive when officers rescued her from the classroom more than an hour after the shooting, but ultimately died from her injuries.
Legal experts could not recall any previous cases in which Texas law enforcement officers had been charged with child endangerment, a crime typically brought against a parent, guardian or associate of a victimized child.
But the law contains provisions that give prosecutors leeway to prosecute anyone they believe knowingly took or failed to take action that placed a child in imminent danger of death or bodily injury. There is ample evidence in body camera footage, radio communications and other records showing police inaction that day.
“It’s rare to have such detailed records showing that it took over an hour for police to arrive at the perpetrator and victim after being called,” said Ben Varghese, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Worth.
Regardless of whether Mitchell, the Uvalde district attorney, is convicted, the charges “send a direct message to law enforcement that if you’re a police officer and you know a child is in danger, you can’t wait an hour to engage a bad actor,” Varghese said.
Houston criminal defense lawyer Nicole DeBord said the two former officers, Arredondo and Gonzalez, were specifically highlighted among the hundreds of people in attendance that day possibly because prosecutors believe “they were the decision makers telling officers what they could and couldn’t do.”
“It’s not surprising that criminal charges will be filed,” she said, “but what’s difficult is obtaining a conviction, because the defendants have no connection to the children other than receiving a call for help in a very unpredictable situation and are being charged with decisions they made that day.”
The charges came after two years of intense pressure from the victims’ families who had sought accountability from the District Attorney’s Office. As months passed and the Texas Rangers completed their investigation, Mitchell endured skepticism and criticism from across the state and the nation.
But DeBord said a painstaking and thorough investigation would likely be required to determine whether charges could be brought, given the sheer volume of evidence and the size of the crime scene. Mitchell convened a grand jury in January to return an indictment within the three-year statute of limitations for the charges, Varghese said.
The inadequate response hampered emergency medical workers’ attempts to quickly treat victims. The delayed medical response was revealed in a 2022 investigation by The Washington Post in collaboration with The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.
The Post investigation found that the overall delay in enforcement was caused by inaction from a range of agencies. Senior and Supervisory Law Enforcement Officers Some officers continued to work and had direct knowledge that a shooting was occurring inside the classroom, but failed to stop the shooter quickly enough.
