3 Albuquerque Schools Locked Down After Report of Armed Man
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A middle school was locked down for three hours Thursday morning as SWAT teams searched the campus for a man who reportedly was brandishing a knife, police said.
"A student reported she was approached by a man in all black armed with a knife," said Officer Trish Hoffman of the Albuquerque Police Department.
"We've conducted a number of searches inside the school and secondary searches outside the school, and we haven't located anybody," she said.
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Police also were looking at videotape of the outside of James Monroe Middle School, she said.
The girl reported that the man was "outside the school near a portable or by the bathroom or something like that," Hoffman said.
"We don't know if he touched her," Hoffman said.
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The school was locked down at 8:55 a.m. and was reopened at 11:50 a.m., said Rigo Chavez, Albuquerque Public Schools spokesman.
Two elementary schools — one about three-quarters of a mile to the northwest and the other about a mile to the west — were locked down as a precaution, he said.
Those two schools were reopened shortly before 11 a.m., Hoffman said.
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Chavez said he did not immediately know how many people were involved in the lockdowns.
An Albuquerque police SWAT team — along with SWAT teams from the school district, Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department and Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety — responded to the middle school, Hoffman said.