Uvalde school shooting: acting police chief on day of massacre placed on administrative leave

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said Sunday that the city’s acting police chief on the day of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting has been placed on administrative leave. 

McLaughlin said Lt. Mariano Pargas had been placed on administrative leave to determine whether he was responsible for taking command after a gunman entered the school and killed 21 people – including 19 children – on May 24. 

The announcement came after the release of a 77-page report that criticized both state and federal law enforcement, and not just local authorities in the South Texas town for the inaction by heavily armed officers as the gunman was massacring students. 

According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers were massed at the school. The overwhelming majority of those who responded were federal and state law enforcement. That included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials.

UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING ‘HALLWAY VIDEO’ RELEASE BLOCKED BY DA, TEXAS SAYS

“Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,” the report said. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”

The report noted that many of the hundreds of law enforcement responders who rushed to the school were better trained and equipped than the school district police — which the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state police force, previously faulted for not going into the room sooner.

The report — the most complete account yet of the hesitant and haphazard response to the May 24 massacre — was written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives and released to family members Sunday. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.