Former Uvalde CISD police chief files motion to declare indictment invalid
UVALDE, Texas - Former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Police Pete Arredondo is asking the court to declare his child endangerment indictment invalid.
According to the Motion to Quash filed on Friday, filed by attorney Paul Looney with Looney, Smith & Conrad, P.C., the indictment against Arredondo fails to allege the former police chief committed the offenses listed.
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Arrendondo was charged with 10 counts of child endangerment on June 27, 2024, for the school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022.
In the motion, Looney claims the indictment doesn't state how Arredondo's actions themselves placed the victims in imminent danger but instead describes how they were already in imminent danger by the shooter.
"The indictment fails to allege any forbidden conduct by Mr. Arredondo that makes him culpable for placing them in imminent danger apart from the imminent danger they already faced from the entirely independent actions of another. The indictment itself alleges that the victims were already in imminent danger based on the conduct of a third-party ruthless killer who was already hunting and shooting children in the room where the named victims tragically lost their lives," the document states.
The motion goes on to state the "disjunctive" allegations in the injunction are "vague, uncertain, and indefinite", and will make it "impossible to instruct the jury in such a way as to ensure that its verdicts are unanimous."
Disjunctive refers to claims in a plead joined by the word "or," rather than the conjunction "and."