Cops: Eastie teen warned student of school attack
An illegal immigrant teen now being held by immigration authorities told an East Boston High administrator he threatened to commit a massacre at the school because “I felt bad for what happened in Florida,” according to a police report on the incident.
“Ya, I said it because I felt bad for what happened in Florida,” Kevin Ademir Vasquez Funes, 19, a citizen of El Salvador, allegedly told dean of students Ricardo Perez Wednesday in an apparent reference to the Feb. 14 mass killing in Parkland, Fla. “I don’t think I said anything wrong. What’s the big deal?”
Funes’ alleged comment was brought to the attention of faculty and school police by a parent whose daughter came home from classes last Tuesday upset because Funes had allegedly told her friend, “I am coming next Tuesday to shoot up the whole school. I am telling so you don’t come to school and you will be safe,” the police report states.
Police reported an administrative search was conducted on Funes’ backpack “for weapons to no avail.” No weapons were found on his person or in his student locker, police said. The report also noted “no known gang committed offense.”
Funes was arrested at school Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to threatening to do bodily harm. He was freed on $5,000 bail with a GPS monitoring device and ordered to stay away from “East Boston High School and all other schools.”
Friday, Funes was arrested at his apartment on Marion Street by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE spokesman told the Herald that Funes “unlawfully entered the U.S. in 2015” and would “remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his immigration case.”
No one answered the door at Funes’ home yesterday.
The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice yesterday called on the city to investigate how Funes ended up on ICE’s radar, saying in a statement the matter “was being addressed by local law enforcement and courts” and adding, “We should be relying on our own institutions to hold our students accountable.”