Texas school district refuses to say if the Uvalde police chief accused of delaying the mass shooting response is still working there

• A Texas school superintendent refused to say if the district's police chief still works there.
• "I am not going to be able to answer that in a public forum," the Uvalde superintendent told reporters.

The superintendent of the Uvalde, Texas, school district where last month's mass shooting occurred refused to say on Thursday whether the district's embattled police chief remains an employee.

Dr. Hal Harrell, the superintendent of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, was asked by a reporter during a press briefing whether Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the school district, is still working for the district.

"That's a personnel matter," Harrell responded. "I am not going to be able to answer that in a public forum."

Authorities have identified Arredondo as the on-scene commander during the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The police chief has come under fire for delaying authorities from confronting the 18-year-old gunman.

It took more than an hour for officers to go into the classroom where the shooter carried out the rampage and stop him, even though students trapped inside repeatedly called 911 for help over a roughly 40-minute span.

Ultimately, a US Border Patrol team unlocked the door of the fourth-grade classroom and shot and killed the gunman.

Col. Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said that Arredondo made the "wrong" decision in prolonging police from going inside.

Arredondo was "convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children" and that the situation had transitioned from an "active shooter" to a "barricaded subject," McCraw has said.

The New York Times reported last week that Arredondo did not have a radio to communicate with other law enforcement officers during the school shooting, possibly impacting the law enforcement response.

When asked during Thursday's briefing whether Harrell still "trusts" Arredondo, he replied, "I am not going to comment," again citing it being an personnel issue.

Harrell and school district spokeswoman Anne Marie Espinoza were also grilled during the press conference over why the school district posted to Facebook during the massacre that "staff and students are safe in the buildings," but they again refused to answer.

Espinoza had warned reporters that the school district would not answer questions involving the shooting investigation or personnel matters during the briefing.

"Our district to continues to collaborate with the investigation," Espinoza said, adding, "Questions cannot be addressed in regards to the investigation. Please let me remind you that the district cannot address personnel matters in an open forum."

Meanwhile, Harrell said that the district was hoping to hire more police officers to patrol the campuses of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for the upcoming school year.