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Aftermath of a hoax
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Officers speak with 13-year-old student Julie McEwen outside James Monroe Middle School after the girl reported seeing an armed man dressed in black in a school hall. Albuquerque police say McEwen made up the story, which prompted a massive response by school and law enforcement officials Thursday morning.
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The parents stood behind yellow police tape a long block away, watching the blue lights swirl outside the 1,400-student middle school on Albuquerque's West Side.
But their thoughts were on a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania.
Or two other schools where people were shot to death last month.
Or Columbine.
"The national events" was how police and school officials referred to a decade of school shootings that have left dozens of students dead.
At Albuquerque's James Monroe Middle School on Thursday, the claim of an armed man dressed in black walking the halls turned out to be a hoax, concocted, Albuquerque police say, by a 13-year-old girl struggling to adjust to a new school.
"She said she hated her (expletive) school," Albuquerque police spokeswoman Trish Hoffman said, describing the girl's confession.
Julie McEwen has been charged with a misdemeanor count of filing a false police report, police said Thursday.
But the hoax only became clear after a massive response by school and law enforcement agencies. Parents flocked to the school and the story was picked up by national news media.
Doors at James Monroe were locked to prevent anyone from entering or leaving for three hours. Three neighboring schools - two public elementary schools and a private school - were locked for shorter periods.
More than 100 police officers from three agencies surrounded the middle school, and SWAT teams swept its grounds and halls in what Police Chief Ray Schultz described as an "active aggressor response."
Schultz acknowledged that, in light of recent national events, the heavy response was bound to kindle fears of a violent incident here.
"But we don't have the luxury of worrying about that," he said. "The safety of the students is paramount. We have to take a report like this seriously."
Schultz sought to characterize the lockdown as a sort of successful drill for a very real contingency.
"It demonstrated that, should we have a real incident like this, we'll have an exemplary response," he said.
Parents walking toward James Monroe after the lockdown was lifted late Thursday morning passed heavily armed SWAT officers returning to their vehicles. Most parents said they were reassured by the police presence.
"I hope it will encourage the kids that they are protected," said Joyce Myers, whose granddaughter attends the eighth grade at James Monroe.
"It scared the bejesus out of me though," she added.
Others said the day had left them feeling that national events had brushed far too close to home.
"With everything that's going on, you just don't know," said Julian Marquez, who has a son at the middle school and a daughter at a nearby elementary school.
"I'm scared to bring my kids to school," added his wife, Michelle Marquez.
Claudia Quevedo, whose daughter Gabriela attends James Monroe, said the family had just moved to Albuquerque from Montreal.
"It was a lot calmer there," she said, before remembering the shooting at a Montreal college that left one student dead and a dozen students and staff injured in September.
"I guess they had their problems there, too," she said.
Laura Owen, the school district's counseling manager, said a "crisis team" of counselors will be sent in to James Monroe today.
The counselors will help students and staff separate what happened at their school from what has happened elsewhere, and reassure them that they are safe, Owen said.
"What's happened lately has created a lot of fear and trauma," she said. "We really need to tell our students that what happened here (with the lockdown and search) was exactly what needed to happen."
She said parents needed to project a sense of calm and normalcy, but also give their children an opportunity to talk about their fear.
She also suggested parents keep a close eye for signs of stress. Sleeplessness, nightmares and loss of appetite are common warning signs, Owen said.
But Owen said she was confident James Monroe's students would recover.
"Children are very resilient," she said.
Emerging from James Monroe after the lockdown was lifted, eighth-grader Ronnie Vickrey described the scene inside.
He said students weren't told why they were on lockdown. They gathered pieces of information from incoming cell phone calls, until their teachers started taking away on their phones, he said. It was dark and cold, Ronnie said, and they were told to hide under their tables.
"So were we," said his sister, 10-year-old Kayla Vickrey, a student at one of the nearby elementary schools that was also locked down.
Their father smiled warily.
"It was pretty brutal," Jim Vickrey said. "But I'm just glad they're OK."
