Posts Tagged ‘Donna ISD’

More Donna ISD Weirdness: Active Shooters Thwarted?

Wednesday, June 1st, 2022

This is a small post-Uvalde-shooting story that I might not have posted had it not happened in Donna ISD.

Four students at a high school in Donna, TX were arrested last week for making terroristic threats towards their school just days after the Uvalde shooting.

Two 17-year-old males — Barbarito Pantoja and Nathaniel Montelongo — were arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Both were held on $750,000 bond. That charge, if convicted, carries with it up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

An anonymous tip was made on the same day as the Uvalde shooting in which 21 people, including 19 children, were murdered.

Police investigated the tip, which led to the arrest of Pantoja and Montelongo, along with two other students, to-date unnamed juveniles, who were also arraigned last week.

Classes resumed Tuesday in Donna Independent School District after the administration canceled classes for the week once discovering the threat. “We’ve received a credible threat of violence that is currently under investigation,” the district’s statement to parents read. “In light of the recent events and in an abundance of caution, we will be canceling school district-wide and staff will work from home.”

According to initial reports, an AK-47 and a “hit list” were found at the home of one of the students, but Donna Police Chief Gilbert Guerrero later said his department found no such list and did not specify whether a firearm was found.

Time to dig this handy visual aid out again:

Absent an actual weapon, I suspect there’s less to this story than meets the eye, and is probably nothing more than a case of disgruntled teenagers shooting their mouths off. What really caught my eye was the fact this happened in Donna ISD, which punches well above its weight for stories of weirdness and corruption. Previous Donna ISD stories:

  • School board members were convicted of extortion.
  • $1 million in missing funds.
  • Vote-Buying and Suicide Over a School Board Election?

    • And that’s to say nothing of Round Rock ISD importing sketchy Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez from Donna ISD.

    I don’t know what it is, but Donna ISD produces more notable news stories than every other Rio Grande Valley school district combined.

    Maybe there’s a South Texas version of the South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet…

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Donna ISD Update: December 2016 Edition

    Thursday, December 8th, 2016

    One update swept aside in late October by the flood of Clinton Corruption news was the latest from Rio Grande Valley’s Donna ISD.

    You may or may not remember from back in July when I reported that former Donna ISD employees were sentenced to prison for extortion.

    There was a lawsuit filed over their replacements:

    A lawsuit filed by two school district trustees claiming the board illegally appointed two replacement board members in February was partially dismissed last week, but plaintiffs who argue the judge wasted precious time on this case have already filed an appeal.

    Leslie McCollom, representing plaintiffs and board members Efren Ceniceros and Ernesto Lugo, filed an appeal Monday to state District Judge Luis Singletarry’s ruling on Oct. 20 which allowed the two appointed board members to continue serving until Election Day and all the actions they voted on to stand.

    The 92nd District Court judge had already dismissed an emergency temporary restraining order against the board on Feb. 25, but a hearing for both parties to argue their case had been rescheduled or canceled several times since. A final ruling on court and attorney fees is still pending.

    “It has been extraordinarily difficult to get what is basically a simple issue of law from the court,” McCollom said Wednesday. “It was unusual that he refused to set a hearing on a temporary injunction.”

    Ceniceros and Lugo filed the lawsuit on Feb. 12 after two school board trustees and former members of Team November, Eloy Infante and Elpidio Yanez, were replaced after they both plead guilty to extortion charges.

    The duo is currently serving time in federal prison for requesting monetary and gift bribes from an insurer hired while they were on the board.

    Since then an entire new board of trustees has been elected. “Out of the six seats available on the board, three were filled by Valentin Guerrero, John Billman, and Dr. Donna Mery from the United for Change slate. Eloy Avila, Alicia Reyna, and Eva Watts from the Restoring Trust slate took the other three.” (I’ll go ahead and tag those names, just in case I need them for the next Donna ISD update…)
    Other Donna ISD legal news:

  • Manuel Castillo, a Donna ISD assistant coach, was arrested for exposing himself to fifth grade girl.
  • “A South Texas school security guard who was videotaped apparently throwing a high school girl to the ground was arrested on Tuesday by Donna police and charged with official oppression and making a false report to law enforcement.” The security guard’s name is Michael Soto. Here’s video of the incident, which evidently occurred during a large school brawl:

    I’ll let you draw your own conclusions over whether Soto’s force was excessive or not.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for July 11, 2016

    Monday, July 11th, 2016

    I was busy buying books this weekend, so I couldn’t keep up with all the horrific police shootings. So that dominates the top of today’s LinkSwarm:

  • Remember that #BlackLivesMatter is being funded by liberal billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer.
  • “Creating hatred against white people and against police has been the major accomplishing of Black Lives Matter since its inception in 2014.”
  • To that end, Heather McDonald’s new book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe looks like it could be interesting.
  • 43% of America’s cop killers are black.
  • “Until blacks start changing these pathologies, the whole ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, with its insistence that everyone has to change except for blacks themselves is nothing more than Progressive kabuki theater aimed at diverting attention from the fact that Democrats are facilitating self-destructive behaviors in the black community and that blacks are using the Democrat propaganda machine as an excuse to avoid the terrible (but not insurmountable) challenges that really claim black lives.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More on the same theme:

    Who, exactly, is in charge of these cities and city agencies about which African Americans do have many legitimate complaints? Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago: Not exactly famous enclaves of conservative Republican political dominance. Because Dallas is in Texas, people sometimes forget that it is a city like any other American city, and Democrat-dominated. In Dallas, as in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit, that Democrat domination is due in great part to a black Democratic voting bloc.

    Eventually, someone is going to figure out that the black progressives protesting municipal arrangements in places such as Baltimore are protesting the municipal arrangements created by black progressives working for the interests of the Democratic party. Dallas’s racial politics aren’t as one-sided as Detroit’s, and neither are its party politics; it is Democratic, but not as lopsidedly Democratic as, say, Philadelphia. It even has had a Republican mayor (the office is technically nonpartisan) within living memory. No doubt somebody in Dallas already is trying to figure out a way to blame that mayor for the murder of those five police officers.

  • “Friends and family tell us that Alton Sterling was a great guy. That may well be the case, but he is also a convicted sex offender felon with a violent temper, who had six arrests for battery, two domestic violence charges, multiple illegal weapons charges, and who had fought with police over weapons before.”
  • The Curious Case of Philando Castile. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Majority of Americans disapprove of the decision not to charge Hillary Clinton over EmailGate. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Maybe that’s why Trump is up two points over Clinton in the latest Rasmussen poll. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Czech President calls for EU, NATO referendums.
  • Fascinating story on a history of the mob in Houston.
  • Mickey Kaus examines who Trump should pick as VP.
  • “Quantitative easing only works when you’re the only country doing it.”
  • “More than 100 Nobel laureates have a message for Greenpeace: Quit the G.M.O.-bashing.”
  • Mass-shootings have declined so much that the left has had to redefine what a “mass shooting” is.
  • Important safety tip: Don’t breast-feed your children while doing cocaine. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • 12 die in Java gridlock during Ramadan.
  • Ted Cruz staffs up for a 2020 Presidential run.
  • Members of Donna ISD school board convicted of extortion. (Previously.)
  • SuperGenius tries to rob gas station, ends up shooting himself in the groin. I also wonder if he’s the towering intellect that managed to clip his own driver’s side mirror at the pump in the video…
  • There’s an anime series that follows the lives of teenage girls who are also assault rifles. Oh Japan, don’t ever change…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Texas | No Comments »

    Donna ISD Update

    Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

    Hey, remember Donna ISD down in the Rio Grande Valley? You know, where the school board president committed suicide over a vote-buying scandal that followed hot on the heels of a bribery and graft scandal?

    Turns out that there’s no end to the school district’s corruption.

    “Last year, school officials failed to account for more than $1 million in missing funds. Marking the third consecutive year of unbalanced books, the district’s chief financial officer was removed — and reassigned as director of accounting.”

    Snip.

    Perched near the Mexican border, Donna schools serve a poor, heavily migrant community where public funds are coveted.

    “Everyone is employed by the school district, the city or the county. It’s all about contracts and which friends get the bids,” Rio Grande Valley activist Maricela De Leon told Watchdog.org.

    To hammer out those contracts, the board hired Robert J. Salinas, a convicted felon who served federal prison time for money laundering. Salinas now enjoys a $300,000 annual retainer and bills at $250 per hour. In May, Salinas charged the district more than $33,000, according to Breitbart Texas.

    All this follows an attempt to oust superintendent Jesus Reyna over an alleged sex scandal.

    And two weekends ago, Donna ISD Police Supervisor Ambrosio Francisco Limon was arrested for getting into a fist fight over a soccer game.

    Sounds like state officials should take a close look at how Donna ISD does business…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats | 1 Comment »

    Vote-Buying and Suicide Over a School Board Election?

    Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

    Inexplicable goings-on down in the Valley:

    “Donna school board President Alfredo Lugo hanged himself in his home on New Year’s Day, authorities confirmed Thursday.”

    Donna ISD is located in the Rio Grande Valley between McAllen and Harlingen. Lugo’s reason?

    “The motive for the suicide was not immediately clear, but it came shortly after federal authorities arrested three women accused of buying votes for school board candidates in the most recent Donna ISD election.”

    A school board election? Really? It’s not exactly a small district, given it’s $150 million budget, but still. Why would you even rig a school board election?

    Maybe for the graft? In 2011, six district officials were convicted “in a bribery scheme that that totaled more than $600,000” stretching back to at least 2002.

    Also of note: former Donna schools Superintendent Andres Martinez was awarded $1.2 million in damages in 2009:

    “Martinez, who served as the Donna school district’s chief administrator during part of 2001, sued the district and several of its then school board trustees, alleging they had conspired to illegally fire him because he refused to hire, promote or give raises to political operatives who supported the majority faction on the board.”

    Donna also has a long-standing issue with the drug trade. Related? Maybe, maybe not.

    Something stinks down in the Valley, and it’s not Mexican cheese. Attorney General Greg Abbott and/or the Texas State Board of Education (I’m unclear who would have the responsibility) might want to consider launching a full audit of the district to see just where the money has been going…

    (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | 5 Comments »