Uvalde: School Board Fires District Police Chief for Response to Mass Shooting

19 children and two teachers were killed in the Texas city three months ago by an 18-year old gunman.

The latest mass shooting, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has plunged the country into yet another cycle of collective trauma.

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The Uvalde school board on Wednesday, 24 August, fired the school district's police chief for his response to the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in the Texas city three months ago, Reuters reported.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously in favour of firing Pete Arredondo, which was met with applause by the victims' family members, with some in the audience shouting, "Coward!"

On the other hand, the lawyers appearing for Arredondo called him "a courageous officer" and the decision to fire him "an unconstitutional public lynching," according to the BBC.

"The complaint that an officer should have rushed the door, believed to be locked, to open it up without a shield capable of stopping an AR-15 bullet, without breaching tools… is tantamount to suicide," they argued in a 17-page statement, reported by the Austin-American Statesman.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), Arredondo acted as "incident commander," choosing not to send officers to confront the gunman and neutralise him sooner.

Arredondo had stepped down in July from a city council seat which he had won a few days before the school shooting.

Eighteen-year-old Salvador Ramos was shot and killed by responding officers on 24 May, after he went on a killing spree at Robb Elementary School.