Kidnapping

of our children while under school care.”

Aurora police arrested Solomon Galligan, a 33-year-old man and registered sex offender, about three hours after he allegedly went to the school on Friday and, while holding a white blanket, walked up to children who were playing outside during recess. Police said he then lunged toward the kids and tried to grab one of them as the students started to run away. Students began screaming “stranger danger,” and that’s when the suspect apparently left the school, according to an arrest report.

The school notified parents of the incident in a brief message Friday afternoon and sent two more messages Friday night and Sunday about law enforcement contact with the suspect.

On Monday, Principal Amanda Replogle sent another email with an explanation of what occurred, an apology for not bringing all students inside right away when the suspect approached students and details about what security measures would be taken to make students feel safe.

School district spokesperson Lauren Snell shared those emails with The Denver Post but declined to comment further until the suspect had been charged.

He is scheduled to appear in court today.

The parents calling for more accountability and transparency, however, say that’s not enough and that there were failures on multiple levels that put their kids in danger, including ignoring safety protocols. They want the district to make permanent changes.

“This is now being treated as a near miss,” Shannon Mccorison told The Denver Post of the district’s response. “And the fact is, a kid was attacked. He was attacked, whether it was successful or not.”

Mccorison is the parent of a third-grader at the school and is one of the parents behind the effort to put pressure on the school and district to take action.

In the letter sent to officials Tuesday, Mccorison and other parents called for temporarily reassigning administrators who were involved in the incident response to duties without direct student contact until an investigation concludes.

And they requested that the school hold an open meeting with parents about how the school handled the situation — including failures — that day, and implement permanent enhanced security measures at the school.

It took nearly an hour before police were notified of the incident, according to a timeline compiled by Nicole Jass, one of the parents who spoke to people involved.