The police response to the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting has been hard to understand. But now one of the city's top officers is offering an explanation as to why police waited an astonishing 77 minutes before entering the locked classroom the gunman was in.
The officer just gave an interview to The Texas Tribune. In it, he defended how long it took law enforcement to confront 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos, saying a missing key to the classroom door was to blame.
The time that elapsed allowed the shooter to murder 21 people, 19 of whom were defenseless children.
“Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” he told the outlet. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced.”
Arredondo said that the door couldn't be kicked in. It had a steel jamb, and the key was the only way to gain entry. He said he stood in the hallway for over an hour sorting through dozens of keys, trying desperately to find the right one.
He relayed that he knew time was of the utmost importance. “Each time I tried a key I was just praying,” he said. “The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible.”
Arredondo also said that for the first 40 minutes he was merely waiting for the keys to be brought to him. It would be an hour and 17 minutes until the door was finally breached.
The Texas Department of Public Safety previously said that Arredondo made a massive error by treating the shooting as a barricaded suspect incident, rather than an active shooter situation.
Another action that has come under fire was Arredondo's decision not to take radios inside with him, which he said he failed to do because he needed both of his hands. That led to him not having all of the information, like that children were calling 911, pleading for police to help them.
“Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat,” Arredondo said.
He also said he didn’t consider himself the commander and that he believed another officer had taken charge. “I didn’t issue any orders,” he said. “I called for assistance and asked for an extraction tool to open the door.”
