Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said Tuesday that he expects Robb Elementary School, the site of last month’s mass shooting, will be torn down.
“It’s my understanding, and I had this discussion with the superintendent -- that school will be demolished,” McLaughlin said. “You could never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back to that school. Ever.”
The comments came during Tuesday’s Uvalde City Council meeting.
The council also considered granting Councilman Pete Arredondo a leave of absence. Arredondo is the school’s chief of police recently sworn onto the council. He has faced criticism for leading a slow response to last month’s mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
The council unanimously denied granting Arredondo a leave of absence.
McLaughlin expressed frustration over the police response to the May 24 mass shooting.
“So I'm just as frustrated, maybe not as frustrated as the families have lost their loved ones, but it pisses me off that I can't give you answers or can't get you answers,” he said. “So, like I said, I don't know any allegiance to anybody I'm termed out as mayor when I get through, and I don't wanna seek political office again.”
On Tuesday, Texas officials delivered a detailed timeline indicating several failures officers at the scene made in responding to the gunman. Among them, officials said officers waited for a key into a classroom for a door that turned out to be unlocked.
"We do know this there's compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” said Col. Steve McCraw of Texas Public Safety.
