School shooting hoaxes plague state

BERNALILLO — Cars manned by anxious parents lined the edges of Bernalillo High School on Thursday after local law enforcement received a false report of a fatal shooting inside the cafeteria.

The report may have been a hoax — one of many throughout the state and the nation in the past several days — but that didn’t stop mothers like Miranda Armijo from fearing the worst.

“I just needed to get my kids out,” Armijo said as she waited for her son and daughter to emerge from the campus in the small town north of Albuquerque.

Local law enforcement agencies across Northern New Mexico received similar false reports Thursday, with Santa Fe High among the schools that went into lockdown.

Santa Fe Public Schools spokesman Cody Dynarski said police were on-site early Thursday afternoon at Santa Fe High and visited other schools across the district, including Capital High, as a precautionary measure. By 3 p.m., Santa Fe police had cleared the Santa Fe High campus, finding no threat, Deputy Chief Ben Valdez wrote in an email.

In a news release, Valdez said dispatchers received a report of a fight in the cafeteria at Santa Fe High, with “multiple” students injured by a firearm.

School was not in session Thursday due to parent/teacher conferences. But in Bernalillo, where students were going about an otherwise ordinary day, the report was jolting.

Bernalillo police Lt. Bryan Dominguez said his department received reports about 12:40 p.m. indicating a student had been shot inside the school’s cafeteria and the shooter was hiding in a restroom.

He said multiple agencies responded to the school — including the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office, the Santa Ana Police Department and the Rio Rancho Police Department — but officers from his department were the first to arrive.

“When they approached the cafeteria there was no students inside. It was empty. The only one that was in there was [a department school resource officer],” Dominguez said.

Unwilling to take chances, officers swept the entire school, classroom by classroom, Dominguez said, adding students told investigators they hadn’t heard gunshots.

Word got out quickly, and with it, angst.

Armijo was waiting in her car on a dirt patch near the high school, eager to pick up her daughter Teyanna Armijo, 17, and her 16-year-old son, Jeremy Armijo.

She said she was leaving work when she heard Bernalillo High was on lockdown. Both of her kids were texting with her from the start of the lockdown, Miranda Armijo said, and let her know there was a potential active shooter.

“That got me more scared,” she said.

Oswaldo Carranza said he was at the hospital with one of his sons, who was dealing with a broken arm, when his other son, 17-year-old Edgar Alexander Torres Carranza, called him.

“He told me ‘Something ugly is happening here,’ “ Carranza said in Spanish. “ ‘Somebody got in and I think [they] may have a weapon.’ “

Carranza said his son told him he was on lockdown in his classroom and assured him he was OK.

The worried father said a number of things went through his mind before it was clear the report was a hoax.

“I thought a lot of things. I said, ‘Wow, well, we never know’ — nothing has ever happened here,” Carranza said.

Bernalillo Public Schools Deputy Superintendent of Business Services Eric James said counselors will help students cope and address their feelings about the situation.

“We’ve got a few that have high stress — emotional issues. We’ll be ready to address that, and then from there it’s just continuing to try and harden our target,” James said. “Try and prepare, train, practice — all those things that we do. That way, if it’s ever the real thing, we’re ready.”