Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, did not mention the officer’s name at a news conference Friday, but said he made the “wrong decision” not to engage the gunman beforehand.
The police chief of the Uvalde school district is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.
“The decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation,” McCraw said of the incident’s “thought process” at the time.
At the same time, children in classrooms 111 and 112 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde repeatedly called 911 and called for help, he said. They were in the middle of the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
“From the benefit of the retrospective where I’m sitting now, of course, it wasn’t the right decision,” McCraw said of the supervisor’s call not to face the shooter. “It was a wrong decision. Point. There is no excuse for that.”
Pressed by reporters if Arredondo was on the scene during the shooting, McCraw declined to comment.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday he is asking for a full account of what happened during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, but said he had no say on whether the school district police chief should be fired.
“As for his job situation, this is something that is out of my control and I am unaware of it,” Abbott said. “Every act of all these officials will be known, identified and explained to the public.”
Arredondo has not spoken publicly about the shooting since two brief press statements on the day of the tragedy.
CNN tried to contact Arredondo at his home on Friday, but there was no response.
Arredondo identified himself on the Uvalde School District website as the police chief and introduced himself as police chief at press conferences on Tuesday in the hours following the Robb Elementary shooting.
At press conferences, Arredondo claimed that the gunman had died, but provided little more information about the massacre, citing an “active investigation” and unanswered questions from those gathered.
Arredondo has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience, according to the school district, and was recently elected to a seat on Uvalde Town Hall.
A school district board of directors approved Arredondo to head the department in 2020. District superintendent Hal Harrell said in a post on Facebook at the time that the board was “confident in our selection and impressed with the their experience, knowledge and community. involvement “.
Arredondo told Uvalde Leader-News after his appointment that he was happy to return to work in his hometown and wanted to focus on education and training in the police department. “We will never be able to have enough training,” he told the newspaper.
In March, Arredondo posted on Facebook that his department was organizing “Active Shooter Training” at Uvalde High School in an effort to prepare local law enforcement to respond to “any situation that may arise.” A pamphlet for the event he posted said the topics covered would include priorities for law enforcement at school and how to “Stop Murder.”
Arredondo previously served as a captain in a school district police department in Laredo, Texas, and in various positions in the Uvalde Police Department.
CNN’s Andy Rose contributed to this story.