One-Third Of Students Absent After Email Threat Targeting School
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DALLAS (CBS11) - In Dallas, the fallout continues from an email bomb threat now discredited as a hoax. The emails threatened a terrorist attack against the Eladio Martinez Learning Center which is a Pre-K through 5th grade campus, along with Pinkston High.
DISD officials sent letters home with students at the schools to reassure parents that the schools have been checked and are safe.
On the Martinez Learning Center campus, extra security was both intentional—and visible. Still, it wasn't enough to comfort 8-year-old Christian Montalvo—or his Mother.
"My Mom said that something was going to happen at school, so she was worried," says Christian, who went on to admit that he, too, was afraid to go to school. So after a previously scheduled eye screening, his grandmother brought him home. And their family was in good company.
According to preliminary attendance figures, roughly 30 percent of Martinez students were absent. On most days, less than 4 percent of students miss school. But, this was no normal day. And assurances from even the city's most respected leaders had little impact.
"We went to the schools, we swept the schools," said DISD Police Chief Craig Miller during a morning briefing, "and we are very confident the schools are safe."
Still, these are anxious times. And those 'what if' questions don't have answers that comfort.
"She (her granddaughter) said go and pick him up… because if this is for real, I don't want to regret it later," said Maria Rogers. Her great-grandson attends Martinez. "So I just want to be sure that nothing's going to happen to him."
Rogers says she, too, was frightened by the threat now being called a hoax. But, she's also angry… with that anger turning to tears as she fumed. "Babies, they don't have to pay for the wrong things that grown people do. And my baby doesn't have to be scared.
A few blocks away, Christian is also annoyed with whoever is responsible for the threat: there's a pizza party tomorrow, and he doesn't want to have to miss it.
"I would tell him to stop because if he's lying to these people," says Christian, "my teachers are gonna waste all of their money for nothing."
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