Another teenager has been arrested and charged with threatening violence at Santa Fe High School. This time, police are alleging the would-be shooter actually had the guns to do it.
According to a report filed by Officer Celestino Lopez, police were dispatched to Santa Fe High on Wednesday after they received a call that Alejandro Valle, a student at Early College Opportunities School, had threatened "to shoot the Santa Fe High School principal," Carl Marano. Police eventually confiscated two rifles they say belong to Valle.
Jeff Gephart, spokesperson for Santa Fe Public Schools, says that Valle showed up to Santa Fe High yesterday to see a friend but was turned away by Marano and a security officer at the school. The encounter allegedly left Valle feeling so upset that he made the threat against Marano to a security guard at College Opportunities, which is on the same plot of land as Santa Fe High.
Officer Lopez writes that after Valle's alleged confrontation with Marano, Valle told the guard he was going to follow Marano at the end of the school day "and shoot him with my AR-15." The teen then parked his truck and went to class, at which point the security guard told the principal of College Opportunities, William Wade, what had happened. Then, somebody called the police.
Here's where it gets hard to follow, according to police reports. After an initial call to SFPD, Wade called the police again to say that the student's truck was now missing from the parking lot. Officer Lopez writes that Valle told him and another officer that he had asked a friend of his to pick up his truck and remove a rifle from it. Valle told officers that the rifle was still in his truck because he and a friend had gone shooting the previous night.
Eventually, police confiscated a Colt .22 magnum bolt action rifle and an AR-15 rifle, both of which they allege belong to Valle. Even though Valle is charged with unlawfully carrying a deadly weapon on school premises—a fourth-degree felony—it's not clear from police records where the guns were found.
SFPS spokesman Gephart says that besides a robocall that went out to the parents of Santa Fe High students about increased police presence today, no other alerts were issued for the district. Valle, who was born in 1999, is being held at Santa Fe County jail.
