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A Texas House committee investigating the school shooting in Uvalde last month will hear from key law enforcement witnesses on Monday, with one notable exception.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo will not be present at the hearing. The witness list for the hearing includes Uvalde CISD Officer Adrian Gonzalez, Chief Daniel Rodriguez, Sgt. Daniel Coronado of the Uvalde Police Department, and Trooper Joshua Bordovsky of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
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Arredondo has faced sharp criticism for his department’s response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Earlier this month, Arredondo defended his department’s response in an interview with the Texas Tribune.
“We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced,” Arredondo said. “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.”
Rodriguez will testify after his department received criticism last week from lawmakers for not cooperating with the investigation. The department reversed its stance and is now cooperating with the committee.
The chairman of the special committee, Republican state Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, said in remarks Friday the city and police department in Uvalde would cooperate with the investigation.
“We had several conversations today with the city of Uvalde, the city of Uvalde Police Department. We are going to actually have witnesses testifying to us from their department,” Burrows said. “They have agreed to that.”
The fourth hearing of the state House committee investigating the Robb Elementary School shooting began at 10 a.m. local time in Uvalde and is being conducted privately.
Previous hearings have had witnesses from the Texas Department of Public Safety and Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez.
The committee is meeting during the observed state and federal Juneteenth holiday due to the urgency of getting accurate accounts of the shooting, according to a notice by the committee.
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“The committee felt it was important to continue with its hearings on this day to hear fresh recollections of witness testimony and work expeditiously to provide needed answers to what happened,” the public hearing notice stated.
The next hearing, currently scheduled for Tuesday morning, will be held at the state Capitol.
