Volcano Vista High School and Tony Hillerman Middle School were placed on lockdown Friday afternoon by Albuquerque Police Department after a 911 call was placed reporting violence on the Volcano Vista campus.
Students and staff at both schools were immediately put into shelter-in-place as APD and New Mexico State Police began clearing classrooms. About an hour later, police determined the 911 call was a hoax and the threat was not credible and the lockdowns were lifted.
Camille Joiner, who lives in The Trails neighborhood, has a senior, junior and a freshman at Volcano Vista and a sixth grade student at Tony Hillerman.
“It was terrifying,” Joiner said. “Especially because I live in this neighborhood, too. One student texted me about the lockdown, then I saw helicopters flying around. As a parent, it’s the scariest thing waiting for a text from your kids saying, ‘I’m OK.’ The schools reacted immediately and handled it very well. The only thing is they didn’t let the parents know about the lockdown. If you don’t tell us, it’s terrifying to get a text from student instead of the school letting us know what is going on.”
Cade Webber, a junior at Volcano Vista, said this isn’t the first time something like this has happened at the school.
“I was outside when I saw four or five cop cars pull up,” Webber said. “(The school) made an announcement telling us to go inside to the nearest classroom. That was the lecture hall for us, which is probably the worst place if there’s an active shooter because there were like 150 or 200 kids in there and there’s only two exits.”
Joiner said that while the schools didn’t communicate with parents, her kids were able to keep in touch with each other and make sure everyone was safe.
“They were able to keep in contact with each other, but they were pretty shook up,” Joiner said. “This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m scared because I don’t know if they are OK, they’re scared because they don’t know what’s going on.”
Albuquerque High School also went into a shelter in place Friday afternoon in a separate incident involving police, according to a tweet from Albuquerque Public Schools, and was lifted about an hour after that notification.
