Senator Goes OFF at Uvalde Hearing: ‘No Amount of Training’ Could’ve Helped Chief Who ‘Literally Melted Into Protoplasm’

Texas State Sen. Paul Bettencourt went off on Uvalde Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo — who was incident commander during the Uvalde massacre — saying no training could have helped the inept response the chief directed.

Texas Department of Public Safety director Col. Steven McCraw testified Tuesday at a Special Texas Senate committee hearing on the massacre at Robb Elementary School that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults. The hearing produced many stunning revelations and emotional moments, including from Bettencourt.

After quizzing McCraw for several minutes about the failures of the classroom door, Bettencourt turned his outrage to the timeline of events that has unfolded over time, and at the hearing. The senator launched into a rant that concluded with a semi-rhetorical question suggesting Arrendondo was sub-amoebic:

Now I’m going to submit to you, I don’t believe there’s any training in the world that could’ve helped this incident commander, because this last 25 minutes, from 12:21 to 12:46, is a disgraceful diatribe of somebody that cannot possibly have responded to this to this crisis. The reasoning, there is no reasoning. The, the torrent of illogical statements here, and it is preposterous.

And all along, people are dying. And what makes this more incredible to me is that there are at least six shots fired during this time. And I submit to you and everyone and members of the committee: every shot is a death. Why is this person shooting? He’s killing somebody. But yet they do, this incident commander finds every reason to do nothing.

And that’s the tragedy of this, of this document. Because clearly people were killed in the initial barrage, you said, up to 100 rounds, but at least six rounds were shot afterwards. Probably at individual targets, at least three. You’d have to– because of the groupings. And that means three children probably died. A teacher bled out. An hour plus goes on.

So is there… any way that officers coming into a situation like that with a clearly dysfunctional and total breakdown of command and control, that somehow that that can be rectified at a shooting like this? Or are we just looking at a shooting that tragically and horrifically lasted so long that they, that it’s so abnormal, so out of what the possible realm of responses are, that they’s simply no way to replace an incident commander that has literally melted into protoplasm?

McCraw told Bettencourt “the only thing’ll make ’em more mad is to see the video. It’ll be worse, I can assure you, if you see it.”

Bettencourt went on to excoriate Arredondo for failing to appear himself.

“Don’t go hide in the house and talk privately. Come to the Senate, where the public in Texas can ask these questions,” Bettencourt said.

Watch above via KVUE.