UVALDE, Texas — A Texas judge on Thursday refused to throw out criminal charges accusing the former Uvalde schools police chief of putting children at risk during the slow response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, while a lawyer for his co-defendant said they want to move the upcoming trial out of the small town where the massacre occurred.

At a court hearing in Uvalde, Judge Sid Harle rejected Pete Arredondo’s claim that he was improperly charged and that only the shooter was responsible for putting the victims in danger. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the shooting on May 24, 2022.

Harle also set an Oct. 20, 2025, trial date. An attorney for Arredondo’s co-defendant, former Uvalde schools police officer Adrian Gonzales, said he will ask for the trial to be moved out of Uvalde because his client cannot get a fair trial there. Uvalde County is mostly rural with fewer than 25,000 residents about 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of San Antonio.

“Everybody knows everybody,” in Uvalde, Gonzales attorney Nico LaHood said.

Both former officers attended the hearing.

Nearly 400 law enforcement agents rushed to the school but waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill the gunman in a fourth-grade classroom. Arredondo and Gonzales are the only two officers facing charges — a fact that has raised complaints from some victims’ families.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of abandoning or endangering a child, each of which carry punishment of up to two years in jail. Gonzales has not asked the judge to dismiss his charges.

A federal investigation of the shooting identified Arredondo as the incident commander in charge, although he has argued that state police should have set up a command post outside the school and taken control. Gonzales was among the first officers to arrive on the scene. He was accused of abandoning his training and not confronting the shooter, even after hearing gunshots as he stood in a hallway.

Arredondo has said he was scapegoated for the halting police response. The indictment alleges he did not follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response.

It alleges that instead of confronting the gunman immediately, Arredondo caused delays by telling officers to evacuate a hallway to wait for a SWAT team, evacuating students from other areas of the building first, and trying to negotiate with the shooter while victims inside the classroom were wounded and dying.

Arredondo’s attorneys say the danger that day was not caused by him, but by the shooter. They argued Arredondo was blamed for trying to save the lives of the other children in the building, and have warned that prosecuting him would open many future law enforcement actions to similar charges.

“Arredondo did nothing to put those children in the path of a gunman,” said Arredondo attorney Matthew Hefti.

Uvalde County prosecutors told the judge Arredondo acted recklessly.