An ongoing controversy in South Texas involving numerous death threats in schools, inaction by the administration, and attempts to cover it up has been growing as more parents come forward claiming that their children are also victims.
Breitbart Texas first reported on the issue this week, revealing that Araceli De Los Santos, the Principal at Flores Zapata school in Edinburg, had actively covered up a case where death threats had been made against a female student. According to Octavia LaVon Martinez, a local attorney representing the victim’s family, De Los Santos had gone as far as ordering the aggressor to delete the videos where the death threats had been made, while taking no immediate actions to protect the student. The victim’s parents have made numerous police reports, and the case continues to be referred to Edinburg CISD.
De Los Santos and School Counselor Lizette Garza told the victim’s parents that the issue had been resolved, but the threats escalated with the aggressor making direct threats about going to the victim’s home and murdering her.
As Breitbart Texas reported, the local school board had a committee hearing involving the death threats. It was during that hearing that it was revealed that as many as seven different female students had received death threats or been the target of bullying by the same aggressor.
Breitbart Texas spoke with one parent whose autistic daughter is one of the victims, and she had received various video death threats and voice messages. The mother shared some of the messages where the aggressor can be heard calling the victim “a snitch” and that she would pay for telling on her, “You are dead … I don’t give a (expletive).”
Since then, Breitbart Texas has spoken with the parents of an elementary school student in the second grade in the same school district who was also the target of a death threat in a separate case. The parents revealed that school officials also ignored them and tried to cover up the reports. The parents claimed that the aggressors had threatened to throw the young boy out of a window of the school and had been constantly intimidating him, despite the parents’ continuously making reports to school officials.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
