By JAKE BLEIBERG, Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) — The Uvalde officer who was leading town’s police department throughout the hesitant law enforcement response to an elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers has stepped down, a city spokeswoman said Thursday.
Lt. Mariano Pargas left the department voluntarily however it was not immediately clear whether he retired or resigned, in line with city spokeswoman Gina Eisenberg.
Pargas is the second police leader to lose his job within the fallout because the massacre in May, when a whole lot of officers waited greater than an hour to confront the gunman inside a classroom at Robb Elementary School.
The town placed Pargas, who was running the department throughout the shooting since the chief, Daniel Rodriguez, was out of town, on administrative leave in July following a damning report from lawmakers on the police response. His departure comes days after recent audio highlighted that Pargas was told there have been children alive in a classroom with the gunman half an hour before officers breached the room.
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Within the months after the shooting, state officials have focused blame on the varsity district police chief, Pete Arredondo, saying he made “terrible decisions” because the on-scene commander to not confront the gunman sooner. Arredondo was fired in August but has said he didn’t consider himself the person in charge and assumed another person had taken control of the police response that eventually swelled to just about 400 officers.
Audio recordings published by CNN show that as officers were massing around the varsity a dispatcher told Pargas there have been “eight to nine” kids still alive contained in the classroom where the shooter was holed up. Pargas could be heard acknowledging the data but greater than half-hour would pass before a tactical team entered and killed the gunman.
Authorities have said the gunman did most of his shooting inside minutes of entering the classroom however it’s unclear whether there’s an official tally of what number of children within the room survived. Corina Camacho, whose son was shot and was considered one of the survivors, told The Associated Press that 11 children weren’t killed and their families try to remain in contact. Kids have publicly recounted playing dead to avoid being noticed by the gunman.
Along with Pargas’ and Arredondo’s ousters, victims families and a few lawmakers have called in recent months for the resignation or firing of Col. Steve McCraw, the top of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Body camera footage, a legislative investigation and media reports have shown the state police had a bigger role on the scene than the department appeared to suggest within the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Ninety-one DPS troopers were among the many 376 law enforcement officers who ultimately responded. Seven were put under internal investigation this summer, but McCraw has defended his agency’s overall response, saying it “didn’t fail” Uvalde. ___
Read AP’s full coverage of the varsity shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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