Parking lot altercation leads to arrest, temporary shelter-in-place, ultimate cancellation of track meet
by Mark Craddock
WALSENBURG — It was an ominous message to hear in the midst of a junior high school track meet: “There is police activity in the area. Please lie on the ground or take shelter wherever you can.”
But this is the new reality in a nation where mass shootings in general — and school shootings in particular — are becoming alarmingly common. Most everybody at the John Mall Sports Complex last Thursday morning, it seems, knew instinctively how to respond. Competitors, coaches and volunteers lay face-down where they were standing; some in clumps along the track, others in the green artificial turf of the football field. Spectators took cover under and among the bleachers.
Nearby Peakview Elementary School went into lockdown. John Mall Jr./Sr. High School went into “secure” mode – what used to be called “lockout.”
To be clear, last Thursday’s incident at the John Mall Sports Complex was not an active-shooter situation.
Ultimately, there was no gun. No shots were fired.
But that was not known at the time.
There were two angry men exchanging words in the sports complex parking lot. One of the men allegedly tried several times to run over the other with his truck.
Early calls to emergency dispatchers indicated that one of the men may have brandished a gun. Those reports proved to be unfounded.
But, until they were, law enforcement and school officials reacted to the situation with an abundance of caution.
Some 10-15 minutes after it all began, Sheriff’s personnel signaled the “all clear.”
Action on the track resumed, with several heats of the girls’ 110-meter hurdles. But officials soon announced the tournament would be cancelled.
“After a brief period of time the authorities gave us the green light to continue with the track meet, however due to possible safety reasons, many of the student volunteers running the meet were pulled out by their parents,” John Mall’s head track coach John Toplyn, who organized the meet, said. “Without the help of those volunteers there was nobody to run events or timing, therefore the meet was suspended.”
The altercation
The incident began as a verbal altercation between Jose Luis Mendez Jr., 42, of Aurora, and Isaac Garcia, 37, of Walsenburg, according to Huerfano County Sheriff’s officials.
According to an affidavit in support of warrantless arrest filed by Undersheriff Milan Rapo, Sheriff’s personnel responded to the high school sports complex about 11:50 a.m. on a report of a fight in the parking lot.
Several 911 callers reported to dispatch that a man driving a red truck was trying to run over another man in the parking lot. Some callers said there was a gun involved, first at the sports complex and additionally at the high school parking lot, two blocks away.
“At that time, Captain Craig Lessar called for a lock out with the schools until we could investigate further to determine if we needed a lock down at both schools,” Rapo wrote.
Sheriff ‘s personnel spotted the red truck in the John Mall High School parking lot and detained Mendez, the driver of the truck, and Isaac Garcia, the apparent victim.
“We were able to determine quickly that there was not a gun being used, by interviewing witnesses immediately,” Rapo wrote. And, after talking to witnesses, Sheriff’s officers determined that Mendez “was the aggressor” and Garcia “was the victim,” the affidavit says.
Mendez was ultimately booked into Huerfano County Jail on suspicion of menacing (a class-5 felony), criminal attempt to commit a class-1 felony (a class-2 felony), reckless endangerment (a class-1 misdemeanor), and interference with staff, faculty, or student of educational institutions (a class-2 misdemeanor); as well as several outstanding out-of-county warrants.
The affidavit says Garcia told investigators he was attending the track meet and was walking back to his car, when “Mendez started insulting him and giving verbal threats of harm. Garcia states that he talked back, willing and ready for (Mendez) to get out of his truck, and he didn’t.”
The affidavit gave no details of the argument.
But when Garcia started walking back to the field, “Mendez revved up his truck and came at him. He was extremely close to hitting him with his truck. Mr. Garcia states that he did strike his side mirror in the process with his hand.”
“It was determined that around 6-7 school buses were in the parking lot when this took place, along with school kids running around in and out of the parking lot while the track meet was going on (with) an estimated 60-70 (junior) high schoolers,” the affidavit states. “When we arrived the coaches had all the students laying face down on the track and field until safe to get up. Your affiant requests that a higher bond be set due to the disregard for the safety of the children on school ground.”
A matter of communication
Aside from drills and a small handful of incidents in which one or both of the schools have gone into “secure” mode, last Thursday marked the first time the school district faced an actual “lockdown” situation, with the threat, albeit brief and unfounded, of an active shooter.
It was made all the more difficult by the need to secure not just a school but an open football stadium full of athletes and spectators — probably the worst possible scenario from a security standpoint.
Communication was the key to the immediate, and successful, response. But this fluid, quickly moving situation exposed some communications breakdowns as well.
In a Tuesday interview, Toplyn said he was on the field coordinating events when word trickled down to him that there was an incident up in the north parking lot.
“I was on the field myself,” Toplyn said. “All I heard was ‘somebody has a gun. I tried verifying that with as many sources as I could. You have to take something like that seriously regardless of how it started.”
He said he radioed to the press box to make an announcement for participants and spectators to take cover.
“We kept everybody in that position as out of the way as you can in an open stadium,” Toplyn said. “At one point, (sheriff’s deputies) gave me the go-ahead to start the meet again.”
“We did the best we could under the circumstances given,” Toplyn said. “I’m thankful it was not an actual threat directed toward the students. Everybody did their best to keep student safety above everything else.”
About a mile away at Huerfano RE-1 district offices, risk management coordinator Rhonda Hribar said she was largely out of the loop during the incident.
“I did not receive a call from dispatch that anything was even going on,” she said. “I got a call from a staff member, then I went into making phone calls and trying to figure out what was going on. It was the same with the lockdown. I didn’t know who initiated it to begin with. We never received a call from the Sheriff’s Office that our schools should be on lockdown. From my understanding, when the Sheriff’s Office got there, they (school personnel) were already doing this. I don’t know who made the call. I’m still trying to get some questions answered myself.”
“So I was like everybody else. I read what was on the media,” Hribar said. “That’s when they came out with the vehicle trying to run over students. Apparently that was not really happening. It seemed like a dispute between two people.”
Hribar said a staff member at the track meet contacted Principal Meghan Archuleta to say the school “should probably go on lockdown because nobody knew for sure what was going on. They were not in lockdown very long. I called the principal after I learned the parties were apprehended and I took them off lockdown.”
Arraignment
During a Friday-afternoon arraignment, District Judge Dawn Mann eased the bail restrictions on Mendez from $100,000 cash-only to a cash or surety bond, and imposed a mandatory protection order barring Mendez from any contact with Garcia, or other witnesses or victims.
But the bail issue might be moot. Mendez faces four outstanding warrants, three from Weld County and one from Jefferson County. Two of those are no-bail warrants.
Mendez remained in Huerfano County Jail as of Tuesday.
