Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
A student at House Municipal Schools talked about shooting up the school and slashed at another student with a pocket knife but did not injure him, according to an incident report filed with the Quay County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Russell Shafer said Monday that student was not arrested, but that the case would be referred to juvenile probation officials. It wasn’t clear whether the student was disciplined or still enrolled at the school.
Attempts to reach House Superintendent Bonnie Lightfoot for comment were unsuccessful.
New Mexico state law prohibits the carrying of knives on school property.
A House faculty member submitted a statement to the sheriff’s office about the incident. It was part of Shafer’s weekly compilation of incident reports emailed to the Quay County Sun.
According to the report, a deputy was dispatched to House Municipal Schools the afternoon of Oct. 18 “in reference a student making threats to shoot up the school.”
The deputy stated he was given statements from witnesses and a teacher whose class where the knife attack allegedly occurred.
The main statement in the incident report was from a teacher, who was not in the room at the time and was speaking to another teacher.
The teacher prefaced the statement by writing: “Aside from this incident there was a statement made about shooting at the school and I addressed it this morning and left it alone,” adding the student who made the threat said “If I was going to shoot at the school, it would only be for” a certain student.
Returning to his desk, the teacher was met by two students. They said one of the students was “ninja kicking in the air” near an American flag and walked next to another student, who then “began to slash at his left thigh with a little swiss army knife resulting in the tearing of his sweat pants,” the teacher’s statement read.
The attacked student, seeing the slash in his sweat pants, retaliated by grabbing a hole of the knife wielder’s shirt and ripping it with his hands. The teachers said he walked into the classroom as the student finished ripping the shirt.
The teacher confiscated the knife, “gave the boys a lecture” and took them to the school office. The teacher said he collected statements from three students who were in the class at the time.