Police Friday afternoon continued to search for the man who
sparked an hour-long lockdown of Luigi Aprea Elementary School
Thursday after two students said they saw him with a gun.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Police Friday afternoon continued to search for the man who sparked an hour-long lockdown of Luigi Aprea Elementary School Thursday after two students said they saw him with a gun.
“We did some extra patrol checks around the school today,” Gilroy police Sgt. John Sheedy said Friday.
No one in the neighborhood around the 9225 Calle Del Rey school reported seeing the man, described as black, in his 20s, average height and medium build, Sheedy said. The students who reportedly saw him Thursday said he was dressed all in black.
Police are still going off the assumption that the students did see a man with a gun, although their report is uncorroborated.
“The kids saw somebody, and saw something, so who knows,” Sheedy said.
Police are treating the incident as a suspicious circumstance, he said, and will continue to investigate.
The two fourth graders told a teacher they saw a man with what appeared to be a handgun in front of the school during lunch. The students, who were in the multi-purpose room at the time, later told Gilroy police School Resource Officer Mike Terasaki that they saw the man standing near the doors of the building. They saw him point a gun at the roof of the multi-purpose room, which has windows facing Calle Del Rey and the nearby playground.
They said the man made eye contact twice, the first time while they were still inside the building. The students opened the doors and went outside, when the man made eye contact again, and then ran away across the playground and adjacent Del Rey Park, toward a recreational vehicle parked the driveway of a residence across the street, about 200 yards south of campus.
Officers arrived, checked out the RV, and searched the school room by room. The search continued down the street at Pacific West, 1575 Mantelli Drive, which also initiated a lockdown.
Students remained in their classrooms until about 2:15pm, or the end of the school day for some. Teachers had instituted a lockdown drill following an announcement from Principal Sergio Montenegro.
Anyone with information about the incident may call the Gilroy Police Department at 846-0350.
