How several guns were seized in one day from Albuquerque high schoolers

Two weeks into the school year, five guns were seized in a single day by Albuquerque Public Schools police in separate incidents at two campuses and near a third.

Two students arrested said they planned to trade the guns they were found with. In another case, a student burglarized a home to gain access to the firearm they brought to school.

And at West Mesa High School, a student whose classroom scuffle with APS police went viral, later pleaded with them not to put him behind bars.

“I don’t want to go to jail, I don’t want to go to jail, it’s my mom’s gun,” the boy told officers, according to an APS police report.

The Journal obtained criminal complaints and interviews from four of the five incidents through an Inspection of Public Records Act request. No records were provided related to the second incident at West Mesa.

The state’s largest school district says it is looking at beefing up security measures.

“On Monday, middle and high school principals will begin surveying their staff, parents and students about the possibility of clear bags for their school sites,” APS spokesperson Martin Salazar said in an email Friday. “It’s important that we engage our community in this conversation to ensure the safety of all.”

He added that the district is also examining “various weapon detection systems on the market to see if any of them might be viable for us,” as well as state-of-the-art camera technology.

“As we’ve said before, all options are on the table,” Salazar wrote. “But we need to work as a community to get guns out of the hands of our youth. We urge parents to talk to their kids and know what they have in their backpacks, rooms and vehicles.”

The incidents

The following has been compiled through APS police reports:

The first gun

The first gun was recovered from a student on Aug. 20 was in the morning at West Mesa High.

Cellphone video showed an APS officer at the front of a classroom with his gun drawn, ordering a student to the ground as two staff members exchange shoves with the teen and try to corner him.

Before it had escalated to that, two students had told a teacher that they’d heard a gun being loaded while in the restroom and provided a description of the armed student.

That teacher then set off the panic button on his badge, which alerted the campus that there was a “possible active shooter.”

The teacher found the student entering a classroom and told police the teen “looked nervous” and walked “very brisk.”

An APS officer, the teacher who reported the gun and an assistant principal entered the classroom and the student grabbed at his waistband. The officer later said he believed the teen was reaching for a gun and drew his own weapon.

The student then scuffled with APS staff and tried to escape the classroom but was unsuccessful. The assistant principal opened the student’s backpack and “saw a butt of a pistol.”

According to the report, officials then looked the student up in the school’s student information system, and found that he had just registered and was not supposed to be in that class or “any other.”

The next day, the backpack was searched by an APS officer, and the handgun was found to be unloaded. In the bag with the firearm were three magazines, one loaded with 21 bullets.

The second gun

Later that day, APS officers responded after a staff member at Albuquerque High School overheard a suspicious conversation and notified the assistant principal.

The staff member, an educational assistant, said she heard a student say, “I have both in my backpack, but if I get caught, I am going to be in trouble with my probation officer.”

The student, who was absent from a few classes that day, was confronted by staff when they entered the campus.

After the student was detained, they were interviewed — with their father present — and told police they planned to trade the gun to another student “for money and another gun.”

The student said they got the gun from Telegram, a messaging app used by some to buy and sell guns and drugs, and had traded a sweatshirt for it roughly four months prior.

The teen said they got the gun to “try and flip it for something bigger.”

The third gun

APS police then confronted the other teen with whom the previous student was going to trade, and the teen reached toward their backpack, where a gun was later found. One officer cuffed the student, who admitted to having a firearm in the bag.

That firearm was found to have been reported stolen to the Albuquerque Police Department in 2023. APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said a woman told officers the gun was stolen from her vehicle when she left the doors unlocked.

Both students were charged with conspiracy in addition to carrying a deadly weapon on campus.

The fourth gun

That afternoon, just off campus at Del Norte High, two students suspected of being armed were found walking along the school’s exterior fence and “headed towards the public entrance.”

The teens fled from APS officers and police caught up to them near a Walgreens store across the street. Police took both students into custody, and found a gun in one of the teen’s waistband.

APS police said one of the students “became verbally and physically combative, striking at officers and screaming at all responders on the scene.” One APS officer said they suffered minor injuries.

APS police said one of the students had been in two fights at Del Norte, on Aug. 18 and 19, and they learned the teen may try to show up at McKinley Middle School or Del Norte on Aug. 20 — the student was suspended from the high school due to the Aug. 18 altercation.

That student was linked to a burglary that morning in which they ransacked the home, stealing a gun kept under a bed.

The student was charged with aggravated burglary, assault and battery, battery upon school personnel, battery and resisting a police officer, in addition to carrying a deadly weapon on school premises.

Since the five guns were seized on Aug. 20, the district has only reported one other incident of a firearm on or near campus, when an online-enrolled APS student waved a firearm at a crossing guard while picking up their sibling at Jackson Middle School.

In an email sent to APS principals on Wednesday and shared with the Journal, the district’s deputy superintendent for operations, Antonio Gonzales, said the district would launch an initiative to try using clear backpacks at some schools and encouraged them to keep utilizing the strategies the district has in place to keep weapons off campus.

“I want to be clear: nothing is foolproof,” he wrote.