- Roland Gutierrez said Pete Arredondo's narrative on the Uvalde mass shooting contradicted DPS reports.
- Arredondo told reporters he did not know he was the commanding officer during the shooting.
- However, the Texas DPS said that Arredondo made the call not to confront the gunman.
Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez said that Uvalde's school Police Chief Pete Arredondo's retelling of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary was in opposition to statements from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
"It's directly in contrast with what DPS has said, so now you have these two competing narratives, none of which makes sense," Gutierrez said Saturday on CNN.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and injured 17 others. The gunman barricaded himself inside a classroom while Arredondo and 19 other officers spent over an hour waiting in a hallway outside.
Arredondo, who serves as the police chief for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, disappeared from the public eye following scrutiny of the police response during the mass shooting.
In an interview published Thursday, Arredondo broke his silence and told the Texas Tribune that he did not think that he was in charge during the mass shooting and that he did not have his radios on him to communicate with other officers at the scene.
The Texas DPS said, however, that Arredondo made the call to treat the gunman as a "barricaded subject" rather than an "active shooter."
The DPS also said previously that Arredondo was not cooperating with their investigation into the incident.
During the gunfire, parents who waited outside reportedly pleaded with officers to let them into the school to save their children but were handcuffed by police.
One parent, who rescued her two kids, told the Wall Street Journal that the police "were doing nothing" while the shooter was inside the school.
Gutierrez has been outspoken about the tragic events in Uvalde and told reporters during a press conference that "we have all failed" and that "everybody was to blame" for the mass shooting.
