How an Arizona school's response to a perceived gun threat upended a 12-year-old's life

Geighe Garcia arrived at his elementary school in Winslow on a Friday last April to what he described as a flood of police cars.

"It was just flooded with police officer cars," said Geighe, 13. "Just flooded all the way around."

Alarmed, he turned around and walked home.

"I was like, 'Hell no, dude, there must have been something really bad that's gone on,'" Geighe said. "I was scared. I thought somebody got shot or something."

But when he got home and told his mom what happened — "I don't know what's going on; there's cop cars all around the school," he recalled saying — she repeated what she'd tried to tell him earlier that morning as he'd rushed out the door.

"'Someone said that you were gonna shoot the school, Geighe,'" he recalled her saying.

That was April 14, 2023. In the year that followed, Geighe's life was turned upside down.

The threat Geighe was accused of making — by kids he said were bullying him — was not found credible. Still, he was excluded from months of in-person learning, including his first semester of middle school.

His experience offers a window into the pressure schools are under to take a hard line on perceived threats of gun violence — and the impact schools' reactions can have on students.

Student's dream about school shooting leads to real-life accusations

On April 13, the principal of Geighe's school called the Winslow Police Department after a parent reported that Geighe had threatened to shoot students and staff.

After receiving the call from the principal of Washington Elementary about 6:30 p.m., the police department sent officers to Geighe's house to speak with him and his mom, Consuelo Garcia. Geighe denied making threats against anyone and "stated he was talking about video games," according to the police report.

Consuelo said she didn't get the impression the police visit was serious.

"The officers were so nonchalant about it," she said.

Consuelo told the officers they didn't have firearms, and the officers didn't ask to search the house for weapons, she said.

Consuelo and Geighe, she said, just spoke to officers outside, "and that was it."

"They had asked what happened earlier, if there was an incident earlier at school, and we were both like, 'No, nothing happened,'" Consuelo said. An officer then told them that there were concerns that Geighe had made a statement that he was going to harm teachers, to which Geighe responded that he didn't say anything like that, Consuelo recalled.

The next day — the day of the flood of police cars outside the school  — officers went to Washington Elementary to speak with three students who said Geighe had made the threats.

According to the police report, several of Geighe's schoolmates had been discussing a dream that one of them had about a shooting in their school. The student who had the dream indicated that the shooter looked like Geighe but didn't say his name. At the time, they were coming in from recess.

Geighe, who had been standing nearby, then approached them and named a student and a teacher who would be first on his list if he were to shoot up the school, three students separately told officers from the Winslow Police Department. According to the police report, one of the students said they laughed it off at the time but "were weirded out."

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The parent who reported the incident told police that she did not want Geighe to "get into any trouble" but rather thought he "needed some kind of help." When asked if she wanted to pursue charges, she declined.

Geighe, who was 12 and in sixth grade at the time, denied making any of those comments.

"I know it's not funny at all to say that you're going to shoot people," Geighe said in an interview with The Arizona Republic. "It's not cool at all."

When he found out the students said he made those comments, "it felt like someone just threw me into prison, right then and there," he said.

Principal recommends long-term suspension

Geighe was immediately given a nine-day out-of-school suspension and a thick packet of work to do at home. But he never completed it — he said it was work he had already done while he was at school, which frustrated him.

"I told myself … I'm not going to redo it because it makes no sense," he said.

During the nine-day suspension, Geighe and Consuelo were informed that a hearing would take place to put Geighe on a long-term suspension for violating the district's student conduct policy.

The policy states that students "shall not engage in improper behavior," then lists examples of improper behavior, which include "threat of harm to any person on District owned or controlled property" and "conduct or speech that violates commonly accepted standards of the District and that, under the circumstances, has no redeeming social value." Any student that violates the policies "may be subject to discipline up to expulsion."

That policy mirrors the model policy provided by the Arizona School Boards Association, which offers advice to districts across the state.

The Washington Elementary principal recommended to the district's superintendent that Geighe be given a 180-day suspension — the length of a full school year — citing eight previous write-ups during Geighe's time in the district that were labeled as "aggression" and stating that long-term suspension was necessary because he had made a threat about students and staff, according to a copy of the letter provided by Consuelo.

In the letter, the principal also noted that Geighe worked with a paraprofessional at school to help with his emotional issues and added that Geighe had made several statements that year about issues he had with students and family.

According to a discipline summary provided by Consuelo, Geighe's eight incidents labeled "aggression" were classified as minor aggressive acts. Each resulted in a detention, a warning or suspended privileges. All except one took place in 2018 or earlier, when Geighe was in kindergarten, first and second grade. The exception was at the beginning of fifth grade, more than a year and a half before the April incident.

Geighe acknowledged that he had disciplinary issues in the past, stemming from anger issues that came from problems at home and bullying at school, he said. He'd been working on it and thought things had been getting better: He had been attending counseling outside of school for about five years, and in fifth grade he started regularly volunteering at a nearby church packing food boxes. "I'm really glad I've changed," he said.

"I had … thoughts of what would happen if I kept going down this road," Geighe said. "I told myself, 'What would this do to mom?' 'What would dad say?' What would grandma say?'"

Consuelo said, "I think church had a lot to do with it, too."

The students who alleged Geighe named a student and teacher he would shoot had been consistently bullying him for two years, he said.

"It's every day, constant," Geighe said. "They'd pick on everybody, but mostly it'd be me because I have anger issues, and they just always want to get a reaction out of me."

"That's why I usually stay around teachers," Geighe said. "It's just constant bullying and bullying. And then as soon as I do anything about it, then I get in trouble somehow."

He often visited the school's paraprofessional when he needed to cool down. There, he could do schoolwork, use stress toys and work on calming techniques like counting to 10, he said.

"He keeps it kind of dark, but he puts on a light in front of you. He's really nice about it. … It's actually really cool," Geighe said.

"It's just like a place to escape," he said. "He also does help you out a lot."

'Ill-advised comments': Conclusions reached about alleged threat

Consuelo was told in a letter dated April 24 that she had the right to obtain legal representation for Geighe's long-term suspension hearing, set for the morning of April 28.

The letter requested Consuelo let the school know at least two working days before the hearing whether Geighe would be represented by counsel. "But I still don't know where I was supposed to get it from," Consuelo said. They went to the hearing without a legal advocate.

The hearing officer — who essentially plays the role of a judge  — acknowledged in his decision that Geighe, under oath, denied making any of the comments the students said he made, according to a copy of the hearing officer's letter provided by Consuelo. He also acknowledged that Geighe merely joined a conversation already in progress about a school shooting dream rather than initiating it.

But he determined that it was "more likely than not" that Geighe had made the comments because he thought it unlikely that the students would have given separate statements to the police officer that were "strikingly similar" if they were untrue.

Still, the hearing officer wrote in his decision that what Geighe was alleged to have said was likely not a credible threat.

He cited the police report — the officer "stated in his report that no charges would be filed against Geighe, presumably because there was not sufficient credible evidence of an actual threat," he wrote.

"I would agree that it is more likely that Geighe might have made some ill-advised comments about the dream, rather than actually proposing a plan of his intent to harm others," the hearing officer continued.

But he recommended Geighe be suspended for the rest of the school year and for "a period of time less than through the remainder of the 2023-24 school year."

The comments the other students alleged Geighe said were "inappropriate and resulted in student and parent unease, as well as a heightened police presence on campus after the incident," he wrote. "This demonstrates the seriousness with which school administrators must view real or perceived threats made to or about others on campus."

Due process for students 'isn't always clear,' legal expert says

All students who face suspension from public schools across the country are entitled to due process, according to Diana Newmark, an associate clinical professor at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

"But what that actually means isn't always clear," she said. State law usually provides more detailed information, but in Arizona, there are not many mandated requirements, she said.

Arizona law requires school districts to provide notice and a hearing for any student suspended for more than 10 days and says that suspensions can only be imposed for "good cause." But how and why suspensions are given out often depends on policies established by a school district's governing board, Newmark said.

Newmark leads the Education Advocacy Clinic at the University of Arizona law school, which provides free counsel for students at suspension and expulsion hearings in the Tucson area. Usually, students in Arizona are allowed to be represented by counsel at disciplinary hearings, she said. But she said it can be difficult for families to find representation because of how quickly hearings happen.

"It's really enormously difficult for families to find an attorney who's available at short notice," Newmark said. If they can find someone, it's often hard for families to afford representation, she said.

School discipline hearings also are unlikely to have the hallmarks of due process that one might expect in a court of law. A hearing, for example, might be based entirely on hearsay, Newmark said.

"There might not actually be a witness to the events at the hearing who saw what happened or knew directly what happened," she said.

In her experience, schools in Arizona typically don't identify who the witnesses are. "A student can't challenge, necessarily … if they don't even know who it is who's making an accusation," she said.

The hearing officer is also not necessarily a neutral party like a judge — they are often someone from within the school district, Newmark said.

Winslow Unified officials said they do not comment on discipline of specific students, citing the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. But Jennifer Sanderlin, the administrative secretary to the superintendent and governing board, said the district takes alleged gun threats "extremely seriously."

Once a principal is notified, officials begin an investigation and inform the superintendent, a school resource officer or the local police department, according to Sanderlin. Students, staff and other involved parties are interviewed, and the principal "makes a plan of next steps."

Washington Elementary's 2023-24 student handbook states that for the first incident of harassment or threats — along with verbal abuse, ethnic slurs, bullying and slander — the minimum discipline can be a detention, while the maximum can be a recommendation of expulsion. Threats are defined in the handbook as a "statement of action which intimidates or indicates future injury to another person." According to the handbook, "school threats" have a minimum discipline recommendation of a long-term suspension.

Newmark said schools will sometimes impose suspensions for statements where there's no intent to harm anyone.

"The question is really whether something is a true threat," she said. "Maybe it's a child or a teenager blowing off steam," making a bad joke or engaging in dark humor.

Sometimes, she said, a school understands students aren't making a real threat of harm but still disciplines them.

"Schools are going to take potential threats of violence seriously," Newmark said. "They might respond with police presence or other security. And so, given this, schools might really be tempted to discipline a student who makes that kind of threatening statement even if there's no actual intent to harm anyone."

'Just so hurtful': First semester of middle school lost to suspension

A couple of weeks after Geighe's long-term suspension began, Consuelo enrolled him in an online school she saw an ad for on Facebook. She didn't want him to fall behind, and the school district doesn't give work to students on a long-term suspension, according to Sanderlin, the Winslow Unified administrative secretary. Alternative in-person options were slim: aside from Winslow Unified, which is the only public school district in the city, there's one private Christian school.

But enrolling Geighe in online school broke Consuelo's heart, she said. It made her sad to think about what he would lose as he missed the in-person transition to middle school: sports, extracurriculars, field days, spirit weeks, more engagement with his classmates and teachers. "That's a big step up," she said.

"For this opportunity to be taken from him and to be left with a computer in front of him is just so hurtful," Consuelo said. "It's not like he can get that back."

In October, she said it was a "struggle" to get Geighe out of bed in the morning to do his online schoolwork, whereas before, she would have no trouble waking him up for school. "There's no more light in his eyes for school anymore at all," she said.

According to Newmark, a long-term suspension can affect a child in several ways, most immediately through lost learning opportunities and disengagement with the school community. There are also the pressures that having a child at home can have on parents and caregivers, she said. And research has consistently shown that "long-term suspensions and expulsions correlate with a host of negative life outcomes, like higher rates of incarceration and an overall lowered earning potential," she said.

Geighe said that online school was "not that bad." It took up about 30 minutes of his day each day, and he spent his free time doing chores around the house, visiting his grandparents and playing basketball with his two closest friends at a nearby park after they got out of school.

But he said the online school was just giving him the basics. Consuelo agreed: "He's really smart. I think he needs to be challenged," she said. "He's not challenged with this online at all."

And Geighe missed seeing teachers in person and having something to keep him busy.

"I just like being there," he said in October.

The school district agreed that Geighe could return in early January, roughly nine months after being suspended.

As the start date crept closer, Geighe was nervous. After all, he would be starting at an entirely new school halfway through the seventh grade.

"The other kids, they got a head start from me because I didn't go to the first day of school," he said. "I don't have the first day or the second day. I don't know where the bathrooms are. I don't know where anything is."

He worried that he might be held back and anticipated being crowded by classmates with questions about where he was, which he planned to respond to with a joke about having been out of the country.

Still, he said, he was going to try his best. And he was excited, too. "I just want to be inside the school," he said. "I just like the new school feeling."

'I really missed it': Back in school after nearly nine months away

The first few months of middle school were hard for Geighe — homework, especially. "All the kids, they had a preview," he said in early April. "They just threw me in."

And it was hard to see the kids he had issues with before he was suspended. He avoided them, he said. "I just tell them, 'Leave me alone,' because I'm not trying to get in another situation like this again," he said.

He missed a few days in March, which prompted a call from the school. He was exhausted and struggling to eat and sleep, but he didn't really know why. "I was really out of it," he said. "Stress, I guess."

But by April, Geighe started feeling excited to go to school again. Homework was still hard, but he became comfortable asking his teachers questions at school. He started waking up on time by himself. He began attending tutoring twice a week after school, and he started volunteering weekly at church again. His favorite subjects are now math and science — he likes being challenged, he said.

"I really missed it," he said. "I don't want to wake up at 12 o'clock all over again, every single day, for forever."

Going to school "makes me feel really good," he said.

"I still have to make a 100% recovery, but — my best guess — I'm at 50% at this point," he said.

Reach the reporter at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How an Arizona school's response to a perceived gun threat upended a boy's life