Three guns reported or seized at two APS schools on Thursday

Two guns were confiscated and a third was reported in separate incidents on Albuquerque Public Schools campuses on Thursday, according to district and city police department officials.

In one instance, two West Mesa High School students — a 17-year-old junior and an 18-year-old senior — were arrested, each for carrying loaded handguns as they went about their day at school, district officials said at a news conference.

In the other, a man was detained by Albuquerque police shortly after witnesses reportedly saw him with a gun while arguing with others in the parking lot of Alvarado Elementary School.

Superintendent Scott Elder said during a news conference the two West Mesa students will face at least a one-year expulsion. A 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office spokesperson later said both students will face charges of unlawfully carrying deadly weapons on campus.

“We were able to confiscate these weapons before anybody got hurt, either intentionally or accidentally,” Elder told media gathered at West Mesa. “But this is happening across the city. And I need to remind families that they have to make sure their weapons are secure.”

District spokeswoman Monica Armenta said APS didn’t know where the students had gotten the guns, but added that the investigation was ongoing.

The man at Alvarado, on the other hand, was released because he “did not have charges related to the dispute at the school,” Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos wrote in an email.

Alvarado incident

Alvarado parent Eric Knight said he was waiting to pick up his 8-year-old daughter from school when he heard yelling.

At first, he chalked it up to the natural chaos of releasing students from elementary school. But soon after, he said he saw an APS police officer running toward two people shouting at each other in the parking lot as teachers shepherded his daughter and other students away from the argument.

“My thing was to get my daughter into the car, and … try to get everybody moving away from the yelling,” he said, adding that he was able to pull forward and get her away.

Gallegos said that around 2:45 p.m., officers were dispatched to the parking lot of Alvarado, where witnesses had seen a man, reportedly with a gun, arguing with others.

Gallegos did not identify the man, who eventually left in a vehicle.

Police responding to the incident spotted the vehicle and pulled him over on Montano Pointe NW, just south of Mariposa Basin Park, where they detained him. Police say he told officers that he was a felon and had a gun in the vehicle.

The man was ultimately let go, but police, who did see what appeared to be a firearm inside the vehicle, sealed and towed it pending a search warrant. No one was injured in the incident, according to a robocall that went out to parents.

“I think it could have gotten worse, probably, I really do, had that officer not been on the campus,” Knight said.

West Mesa incident

Authorities’ investigation into the guns found at West Mesa began days ago, when a mother of a Tres Volcanes Community Collaborative School student reported that her firearm was missing and that she worried her child had taken it.

APS police didn’t find the gun at Tres Volcanes, but during their investigation gleaned the name of a West Mesa student. They pulled the teenager out of a Thursday morning metalworking class and searched him, finding a handgun.

Armenta said that through further investigation, they learned that a second student may also have had a gun and placed the school in a shelter-in-place. When they found him, she said police found a handgun on him.

It’s not clear if the first student gave authorities the name of the second student. Armenta said that no threat was made toward anyone at the school, and Elder said it wasn’t clear what the students’ intentions were for carrying the weapons.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham weighed in on the guns being found at West Mesa, pointing out that not only do firearms present a physical threat to students’ safety, they also leave students “scared, traumatized — and certainly unable to focus on learning” when brought to school.

“I am incredibly relieved that these weapons were safely recovered from these students,” Lujan Grisham said in a written statement. “Gun violence — and the near-constant threat of gun violence — is wreaking havoc on the psyches of our youth.”

Last week, Armenta said police found a gun in the backpack of a Manzano High School student he reportedly had flashed at school and which he’d allegedly gotten from his parents’ safe.

The guns in the two incidents on Thursday would mark the fourth, fifth and sixth guns confiscated on APS campuses so far this school year — on pace with last school year, when 15 guns were reported or seized on APS campuses, with another two being found at an APS charter school.

West Mesa was the school to see the most guns on campuses last school year, with three gun seizures in two incidents separated by less than a month.