'Very angry': Uvalde locals grapple with school chief's role

UVALDE, Texas - The blame for an excruciating delay in killing the gunman at a Texas elementary school -- even as parents outside begged police to rush in and panicked children called 911 from inside -- has been placed with the school district's homegrown police chief.It's left residents in the small city of Uvalde struggling to reconcile what they know of the well-liked local lawman after the director of state police said that the commander at the scene -- Pete Arredondo -- made the "wrong decision" last week not to breach a classroom at Robb Elementary School sooner, believing the gunman was barricaded inside and children weren't at risk.Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at the Friday news conference that after following the gunman into the building, officers waited over an hour to breach the classroom.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the shooting.READ MORE: Uvalde School Shooting News CoverageArredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from high school here, was elected earlier this month to the Uvalde City Council.

A special City Council meeting for him and two re-elected incumbents to take their oaths of office had been set for Tuesday evening, but Mayor Don McLaughlin said Monday that the meeting wouldn't be held.

Then the mayor issued a Tuesday evening statement saying no ceremony had been held, but the members were sworn in Tuesday.The 50-year-old Arredondo has spent much of a nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the head police job at the school district.When Arredondo was a boy, Maria Gonzalez used to drive him and her children to the same school where the shooting happened.