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After the massive shooting at Rob Elementary School in 2022, school leaders in Ubarde, Texas had initially planned to publicly defend district police chief Pete Aredondo, but instead, officials chose to remain silent as an investigation into police actions was unfolded. Arredondo is currently facing criminal charges over delayed conflict with law enforcement gunmen.
Details that have not been reported previously have been revealed in more than 25,000 pages of records the district has disclosed over the week since August 26, after years of legal battles with news outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
The document should have been released in early August when Uvalde County first released the requested records following a settlement with news organizations. Rob Decker, the district’s representative lawyer, admitted at an August 25 board meeting that his office had “erroneously made it to our side” by releasing only a small portion of the files. Board members, including Jesse Liso, who lost 9-year-old Nie Jackie Cazares to film Decker burned about the company’s surveillance.
“When you use the word ‘error’, it really puts it lightly,” Lizzo said. “The word “negligence” comes to mind. ”
However, according to Laura Plazer, one of the lawyers representing the newsroom in the records lawsuit, the district’s law firm may have once again failed to disclose all the requested information. Plazer sent a letter Friday to the district requesting that the remaining files be published. This can include details about the school’s maintenance issues regarding doors that have failed locks, Aredondo’s retirement, and additional communication between staff. Decker, the district’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
The district’s repeated disclosure issues reflect an error made by the city of Uvalde last year. Authorities did not include at least 50 body and dash cam videos in their first record release. They scrambled to disclose them all a few months later.
Another shooting made national headlines last week when two children were killed and 21 children and adults were injured at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. According to Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Texas Freedom Information Foundation, the timing only underscores the importance of releasing Uvalde records even more quickly.
“In many cases, the government will think that by stalling or trying to avoid the release of records, it will help them to protect their responsibility and avoid harsh questions,” Shannon said. Doing so makes it difficult to stop similar tragedy from happening, and hinders the family’s ability to heal.
“The way is to get information faster, not slow it down,” she said.
News organizations previously obtained from sources withheld by many documentary government agencies, but the newly released documents include private internal communications that provide deeper insight into the internal workings of the district. The leaders rarely commented publicly on the shooting in three years after the deaths of 19 elementary school students and two teachers.
In a new revelation, documents show that details of delayed law enforcement responses have been made public just a few weeks after the shooting, revealing district support for Aredondo.
School leaders have long returned silence and refusal to multiple local, state and federal investigations into law enforcement responses to the massacres these records. This included a criminal investigation by District Attorney Ubarde last year that led to the child at risk for Aredondo and another school staff. Both maintain their innocence ahead of the trial scheduled for later this year.
Arredondo initially received a large portion of the responsibility for the response, but an investigation by Propublica and The Tribune found that state and local agency officials mistreated them as a subject of barricades rather than an aggressive threat, failing to control the response.
Three days after the tragedy, Steve McCrow, then director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, announced at a press conference that he was responsible for the failure of law enforcement to confront the gunmen until 77 minutes after Aredondo entered school.
Hours later, district spokesman Anne Marie Espinoza emailed then-director Hal Harrell a press release defending Aredondo, saying his actions in isolating shooters helped students and staff escape the building. The statement warned that the district could only provide limited information due to the ongoing investigation, but said it was “the right time to share these clear details.”
However, the district never released a press release for that version, allowing McCraw’s story to continue incontroversial distribution. No internal communications released so far explain why. None of the district leaders involved answered recent newsroom questions.
Instead, the district issued a press release the following Wednesday, but did not mention Arredondo, but said the school would not comment on the shooting until all states and federal agencies have completed their review.
The email also shows that the district law firm drafted documents to place Arredondo on administrative leave the week after McCraw’s press conference.
Harrell waited several more weeks before taking the action.
The document reveals that Arredondo is increasingly eager to discuss his aspects of the story. In an email exchange with a New York Times reporter shortly after McCraw’s press conference, Arredondo wrote that he hopes to speak publicly.
The police chief said he could not comment at that time due to an ongoing investigation.
About two weeks later, as the investigation continued, Aredondo gave the Tribune an exclusive interview claiming he was not the commander of the incident.
He told director Harrell that the article had come about two hours before it was published.
The director’s email indicates that he will meet with the district law firm the following day to discuss the drafting of the Aredondo agreement that prohibits him from making any more public statements unless he receives written permission from Harrell. The instructions emphasize that the district will remain silent about the shooting in order to “ensure the integrity of the pending investigation,” indicating that public comments could be considered intervention.
“Don’t comply with these directives could lead to unfavourable duties leading up to the end of employment,” the contract states.
On June 15, the police chief attended a hearing at the Texas State Capitol on the following Tuesday, notifying the supervisor that he needed leave to prepare with his lawyer the day before.
Arredondo testified in locked-up room for five hours before the State Capitol Committee, tasked with investigating the shooting on June 21. On the same day, McCraw provided seared and denunciation of law enforcement’s response at another state senator’s hearing, which was open to the public. He claimed that police could have stopped the shooter within three minutes if Arredondo weren’t indecisive.
The next day, Harrell put Arredondo on administrative leave.
In a draft press release that announced the Aredondo holidays, then-support principal Beth Levis suggested before the hearing that district leaders had not received information about their responses.
“I saw the first public information, just like you yesterday,” she suggested to Harrell and the district attorney, saying she should email her “something like, ‘Pete is on vacation, bang bang bang’.”
The district ultimately released a press release indicating that Harrell initially had no intention of making a personnel decision until the shooting investigation was over, but due to uncertainty about when it would take place, he decided to put Aredondo on vacation.
Paul Rooney, a lawyer for Aredondo, said he was not surprised when he learned from the press that the district returned support for the police chief or that he drafted a letter requesting Aredondo’s leave before he gave him.
“It’s clear that their initial reaction was true, and then they decided to shelve the truth and join DPS in your ass politics, and Pete was a consumable,” Rooney said. “The truth is, Pete did a good job that day.”
The majority of documents disclosed in the latest batch were drawn from Harrell’s email inbox. In the hours and days of the tragedy, shooting leaders and survivors at other schools provided assistance. However, many parents, educators and law enforcement agencies across the country have called for him and the police to resign.
Harrell often emailed a to-do list with reminders such as “funerals,” “security we can do,” and people he needs to call. The former manager refused to answer questions about the law enforcement investigation after a press conference on June 9th. The next day, he included a “retirement plan” and a “transition plan” on his email to-do list. Harrell, who did not respond to a newsroom interview request, retired later that year.
The latest batch of email also raised additional questions. For example, the release included a chart showing 13 threats made to district schools that year.
Once the district completes its release of records, the DPS will become the last agency sued by a newsroom that will continue to protect materials related to shootings from disclosure. Newsroom attorney Prather said state law enforcement documents are particularly important. This is because the agency is leading the investigation into the shooting and maintains two terabyte files with the event’s broadest accounting.
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The newsroom issued its first ruling in 2023, with the judge ordered the DPS to release the records, but the agency appealed the decision. The Court of Appeals has not yet ruled after oral debate last October.
The state agency did not respond to requests for comment on the story, but has long argued that public documenting of the shootings could interfere with ongoing investigations and final prosecutions.
“You’re talking about the situation where people have experienced the most horrifying tragedy and losses that people can imagine, and they’re disbelieving those who are already supposed to protect their children,” Plazer said. “To drip that information only after three more years of fighting to get an answer about what happened that day, and after being told by the court many times to produce it…it’s like death by a thousand cuts.”
Priest Jessica and Alex Nuguen of the Texas Tribune contributed the report.
