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The resignation, effective April 6, of police chief Daniel
Rodriguez, who was not in Uvalde the day of the shooting at Robb
Elementary school, comes just days after the Uvalde City Council
released an independent investigation into the shooting it
commissioned that exonerated responding officers.
Previous reports by the Justice Department and Texas lawmakers
offered scathing accounts of officer wrongdoing in the response
at Robb Elementary, including that responding officers did not
immediately confront the 18-year-old gunman. They left him in a
set of adjoining classrooms with students and staff for 77
minutes until he was killed by a police tactical team.
Rodriguez said in a written statement that he was not forced to
resign, saying that "I believe it is time for me to embrace a
new chapter in my career."
Mayor Cody Smith said in an emailed statement that Uvalde was
grateful for Rodriguez's service. He said that assistant chief
of police Homer Delgado would be named as interim chief as a
search for a full-time replacement begins.
"Nothing is more important than the safety of our community, and
we look forward to working together to identify the best
candidate to serve the people of Uvalde," Smith said.
In the city council report released last week, independent
investigator Jesse Prado, a retired Austin police detective,
wrote that responding officers followed the Uvalde Police
Department's policies and he found that they had all acted "in
good faith."
That characterization infuriated the families of the dead
children, who heard the results of the investigation from Prado
during a city council meeting last week.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; editing by
Donna Bryson and Josie Kao)
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