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Robb Elementary School principal Mandy Gutierrez, who was suspended Monday after a Texas House committee released a report on the shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead in May, will return to work after she defended herself in a letter to the committee.
“Thank you for responding to our request for information by submitting your response to the House Investigative Report. As a result of our review, you will be allowed to return to work on this date (July 28, 2022),” Uvalde CISD superintendent Hal Harrell wrote in a letter to Gutierrez obtained by Fox News Digital.
A Texas House committee partially blamed a “culture of noncompliance” at the school in a report earlier this month, saying that “school administrators and school district police… were aware of these unsafe practices and did not treat them as serious infractions requiring immediate correction.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks with Mandy Gutierrez, Principal at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest U.S. school shooting in nearly a decade, during U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit at the school, in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022.
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Gutierrez denied those claims in a letter to the committee on Wednesday, writing that it is “unfair and inaccurate to conclude that I ever [became] complacent on any security issue of Robb Elementary.”
“I will live with the horror of these events for the rest of my life,” she wrote in the letter.
“I want to keep my job not only so that I can provide for my family, but so that I can continue to be on the front lines helping children who survived, the families of all affected, and the entire Uvalde community that I love and want to continue to protect.”
A law enforcement personnel lights a candle outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Gutierrez’s attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, said Thursday that immediately start working again in her role as principal.
“Ms. Gutierrez’s Administrative Leave With Pay has been lifted and she has been fully reinstated to her position, where she will continue to discharge her duties and continue to serve all the families of the UCISD,” her attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
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Two Uvalde law enforcement officials – Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo and acting Uvalde police chief Lt. Mariano Pargas – have been suspended in the wake of the shooting.
