Extra Security At Fort Worth School After Shooting
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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Students at a Fort Worth school saw extra security on Friday after a fight and shooting near the campus on Thursday afternoon. Police arrested two students from Arlington Heights High School who were involved in the fight, including the suspected shooter.
The skirmish took place in the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant near the school. Nobody was injured by the gunfire.
Some students recorded video of the fight leading up to the shooting. In that video, a young man can be seen pointing a gun at another person. There is a crowd of people and, at one point, you can hear a woman yell that someone has a gun. Officers were at Arlington Heights High School on Thursday searching for that weapon.
"Everybody was on lockdown and we had to put tables against the doors just to be safe," recalled student Jessica Robles.
Before the shooting, the campus had actually practiced for a lockdown, so students and staff members were well aware of how to handle this situation.
"I have nothing but praise for the response of campus leadership, teachers and students as we went into a lockdown following the reports of the off-campus event," Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent Kent Scribner said Friday.
However, the threat of violence is not over for the Fort Worth high school. A message being passed around online on Thursday night said, "Heights tomorrow, another shootout... there's gonna be more shooting and fights." That is why police upped their presence at the campus on Friday, and increased patrols in the surrounding neighborhoods.
"If you monitor social media regularly, as we do, you'll see that a lot of these threats do fly around back and forth," Fort Worth ISD spokesman Clint Bond said. "Police are well aware of what's been said, what's being said, what's flying around."
There are other security measures being taken which, police said, might not be so obvious.
"I think they're going to start checking us before school starts, and being more strict about the rules," added Arlington Heights High School student Angel Ramirez.
"The most important thing for our community to know is that the safety and security of our students and staff comes first, and we will do everything to ensure that," said Scribner.