Monrovia’s Santa Fe Middle School receives bogus threat

Photos by Terry Miller

School evacuated as precaution

By Terry Miller

Monrovia’s Santa Fe middle school was on lockdown Monday afternoon after a man called police and said he was on campus with an AK 47 firearm .
The male caller who allegedly had a Middle Eastern accent, ‘phoned the Monrovia Police Department at about 2 p.m., saying he was on the campus of Santa Fe Middle School with an AK-47 assault rifle and was going to start shooting, according to Monrovia Police Chief Jim Hunt.
The school, at Duarte and Peck roads, was placed on immediate lockdown and classrooms were cleared one by one, and students allowed to leave on a convoy of school buses to reunite them with their anxious parents who had been waiting in a parking lot where the future Gold Line station will be.
After hours of police officers checking from room to room and numerous area police agencies assisting, no suspect was found and the threat deemed over and all road blocks cleared shortly after 6PM.
At Santa Fe Middle School, the last of the students was moved off campus just before 5p.m
Santa Fe Middle School had about 640 students in grades six through eight in the 2012-13 school year, according to state records.
In recent weeks, local agencies such as Los Angeles County Sherriff and the Pasadena Police dept. have had extensive “live shooter” training sessions to help officers better deal with such a stressful scenario as a school shooting.

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