UVALDE, TX - MAY 26: Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo attends a press conference on May 26, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and 2 adults were killed during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, with the gunman fatall …
AUSTIN, Texas - A former Uvalde school police chief said the federal government is blocking key witnesses from being able to testify at his upcoming criminal trial in the police response to the Robb Elementary School massacre.
Pete Arredondo is facing 10 counts of child endangerment as a result of his response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at the school which killed 19 students and two teachers.
In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, Arredondo claims U.S. Customs and Border Protection is blocking 19 officers from testifying at his upcoming trial. He claims the testimony of those officers, who also responded to the shooting, will show they acted based on their training and experience and not because of the inaction of Arredondo. Arredondo's attorneys claim the testimony is critical to his defense of the claim he delayed police response.
The backstory:
Hundreds of officers from local, state and federal agencies responded to the school; 188 of those were from CBP. Those officers took more than an hour to confront the gunman, before CBP officers eventually took down the shooter.
The Justice Department said those who responded to the shooting "demonstrated no urgency" and identified "cascading failures" in law enforcement's handling of the mass shooting.
Arredondo's attorneys sent a formal request to CBP requesting the testimony of 19 officers in February. The agency responded with a denial of that request stating the officers were not the only source of the information. The agency said in their denial that allowing those officers to testify "negatively impacts CBP operations and national security" and could result in "testimony related to confidential law enforcement techniques."
CBP has not yet returned a request for comment.
A trial date for Arredondo has not been set.
In January, former Uvalde schools police Officer Adrian Gonzales was acquitted on 29 counts of child abandonment. He is the only other person to be charged in connection with the incident.
The Source: Information in this article came from court documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.