EDINBURG - A carjacking at an Edinburg school has some parents worried about campus security. At Edinburg CISD, a few schools share one security guard. We're told when the carjacking happened at knife-point, there was no security on campus.
Cuts and scratches are signs of what Allen Spencer has been through. He says, "The blade was down with the point stuck right in my throat. He told me, 'Give me your keys or I'll stick you.'"
Spencer was picking up his granddaughter at Lincoln Elementary, the last place where he thought he'd have a knife held to his throat. He says, "It just went that fast. They were that organized, nothing I could do."
The carjackers got away with his van and his iPhone. Spencer says there was, "No security there! No security came out at all."
When police did show up, the school went into lockdown. We talked to a school employee who was inside when it happened. She wanted us to hide her face and disguise her voice. The woman says, "I was really concerned for the kids, that someone would come on campus and hurt one of the kids."
The employee says the school used to have a full time security guard. That's no longer the case this year. She says, "There hasn't been any police officers on campus."
She also says this isn't the first lockdown they've had this year. She wants each school to have it's own security guards. She says, "The school district does need to budget, and yes maybe they do need to do cutbacks, but not where it's gonna put our kids in danger."
She says the kids should come first. She doesn't want another victim on her campus.
We tried to take those concerns to school district administrators or school police, but we were told they were all in meetings this afternoon. One district employee did confirm that Lincoln shares a security guard with other schools, and the guard was elsewhere during the carjacking.
He also told us a police officer was posted at Lincoln for the rest of the day after today's incident. District officials weren't able to tell us today if security guards are being spread out for financial reasons, or if the district might change their security procedures. We'll keep trying to get answers.
