Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez said Uvalde’s school police chief Pete Arredondo’s explanation of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary contradicted statements made by the Texas Department of Public Safety. “It is in stark contrast to what the DPS said, so now you have these two competing narratives, neither of which makes sense,” Gutierrez told CNN on Saturday. On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and injured 17 others. The gunman was trapped inside a classroom, while Arredondo and 19 other officers spent more than an hour waiting in a hallway outside. Arredondo, who serves as police chief for the unified independent school district of Uvalde, disappeared from the limelight after controlling police response during the mass shootings. In an interview published Thursday, Arredondo broke his silence and told the Texas Tribune that he did not believe he was responsible for the mass shootings and that he did not have his radios to communicate with other officers at the scene. The Texas DPS said, however, that Arredondo called for the gunman to be treated as an “exclusive subject” rather than an “active sniper.” The DPS also said earlier that Arredondo was not cooperating with its investigation into the incident. During the shootings, parents waiting outside reportedly begged police to let them into the school to rescue their children, but were handcuffed by police. A parent who rescued her two children told the Wall Street Journal that police “did nothing” while the perpetrator was inside the school. Gutierrez spoke candidly about the tragic events in Ovalde and told reporters at a news conference that “we have all failed” and that “everyone is to blame” for the mass shootings.
