Posted BY: Billy M | NwoReport
Source: Daily Mail
The Uvalde School Police Chief widely blamed for the disastrous cop handling of the massacre has revealed he intentionally ditched his radios before entering the school because he thought they would ‘slow him down’, and said he didn’t know he was in charge of the operation.
Pete Arredondo was in charge of the tiny school police force in the Uvalde Consolidated School district when gunman Salvador Ramos opened fire in Robb Elementary School on May 24.
He has been widely blamed for not responding to the shooting more promptly, and Texas officials even said he gave directives to cops telling them not to try to breach the classroom where Ramos had barricaded himself inside with kids.
Now, in his first interview since the atrocity, he is telling The Texas Tribune that he gave no such directive or any others – because he didn’t think he was in charge.
‘I didn’t issue any orders. I called for assistance and asked for an extraction tool to open the door,’ he said.
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He also says he didn’t know there were kids still alive inside the classroom because he didn’t have his police radio on him.
He had decided to ditch it on his way into the school because he thought it would ‘slow him down’ – a decision that experts have slammed as unheard of.
‘Arredondo believed that carrying the radios would slow him down. One had a whiplike antenna that would hit him as he ran. The other had a clip that Arredondo knew would cause it to fall off his tactical belt during a long run.
‘Arredondo said he knew from experience that the radios did not work in some school buildings,’ the Texas Tribune reports.
The terrified victims were stuck inside the building for 77 minutes as bungling officers tried to figure out how to get past a ‘steel jamb’ entrance to the room Salvador Ramos, 18, was in, the study of video footage showed.
