Teen pleads guilty after threat to principal
Conviction on felony count prohibits 18-year-old from owning gun again
A young Santa Fe man has learned the hard way that bringing a gun to school and threatening a principal’s life are no small matters at a time when the nation is wrestling with an increasing number of mass school shootings.
After pleading guilty Tuesday to a felony charge of unlawfully carrying a deadly weapon on school premises, 18-year-old Alejandro Valle will never be able to legally own a firearm again and likely will face lifelong discrimination from employers.
“He did a very, very stupid thing at a bad time, a fearful time involving students and schools and guns,” Valle’s defense attorney, Tom Clark, said Tuesday. “And now he’s straddled with a felony for the rest of his life.”
Valle had contemplated joining the military at some point, Clark said, but with the conviction on his record, that option could be out, as well.
The case stemmed from a November incident in which Valle — then a student at the Early College Opportunities school adjacent to Santa Fe High — asked a security guard at the ECO school where Santa Fe High Principal Carl Marano lived so Valle could “follow him home after school and shoot him with my AR-15.”
Marano and Valle had exchanged words earlier in the day, according to a criminal complaint in the case, when Valle was visiting his girlfriend on the Santa Fe High campus. Marano told him to leave.
The security guard alerted other school officials to the threat, according to court records, and police later found a rifle in Valle’s truck, which had been parked at ECO.
Under the terms of his plea agreement, Valle
was sentenced to 18 months of incarceration but was credited for 203 days he spent in jail or on house arrest awaiting resolution of his case, and the balance of his 18-month sentence was converted to supervised probation. He also will be required to write a letter of apology to Marano.
Judge T. Glenn Ellington said at Valle’s plea hearing in state District Court on Tuesday that state prosecutors had been prepared to offer a deal that would have allowed Valle to avoid a felony conviction, but Ellington indicated he wouldn’t accept such an arrangement.
“In reviewing the case, I didn’t think it was appropriate,” the judge said. “You’re one of those people in society who should never legally own a firearm because you are impulsive.”
Ten or 20 years ago, before the surge in school shootings around the nation, Ellington said, things might have been different for Valle.
Ellington said he’d identified three main categories of circumstances that led to mass shootings — people who want to draw attention and go out with a literal bang; people who are feel alienated or victimized and want to strike back, and people whose actions are related to relationship issues.
The judge said he felt Valle fell in the latter category and noted that Valle had made things worse for himself by violating the conditions of his release twice while awaiting resolution of the case.
“I don’t know if you are just young and immature,” the judge said, “or if you have a devil-maycare attitude. … It’s very, very concerning.”
Prosecutors and defense lawyers had discussed a plea deal that would have called for Valle to voluntarily surrender his right to own a firearm for 20 years, “but that isn’t enforceable,” Ellington said. “The only way to ensure you were not to have a firearm is for you to have a felony conviction.”