“The Mayor, City Council and City Staff must continue to move forward to bring our community together, once again,” Arredondo said. In response, the city said his resignation was the “right thing to do.” Arredondo’s attorney did not respond to CNN’s earlier request for comment following his resignation letter. The city council’s move came the same day the Austin American-Statesman newspaper published edited portions of surveillance video from the day of the shooting. An edited video shows the gunman walking down the hallway with a long rifle. The recording also shows officers approaching the classroom, but then retreating down the hall and taking cover when shots are fired. Authorities did not directly confront the gunman until more than an hour later. The district’s police chief had previously been identified by state authorities as the on-scene commander during the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School. His role in the botched police response to the shooting — in which 19 students and two teachers were killed — has come under intense public scrutiny and criticism. Last month, he was placed on leave by the Uvalde Unified Independent School District. “Due to the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations, I have made the decision to place Chief Arredondo on administrative leave effective this date,” Superintendent Hal Harrell wrote in the June announcement. in the media. In a hearing before the Texas Senate last month, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw called law enforcement’s response to the attack a “glorious failure” and blamed Arredondo. “Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,” McCraw said at the time. “The only thing that stopped the corridor of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the commander on the ground, who decided to put the lives of the officers before the lives of the children.” Arredondo told the Texas Tribune in June that he did not consider himself the incident commander and assumed another official had taken control of the larger response. A new assessment of the law enforcement response released earlier this month that highlighted key issues and mistakes with the law enforcement response noted a lack of effective command during the incident. Arredondo had been elected to the city council on May 7, just weeks before the school attack. He was sworn in privately, without warning to the media, several days after the attack. At Tuesday’s city council meeting, there was applause from audience members off camera after city leaders passed a motion to accept Arredondo’s resignation.
