Clint ISD reviewing security after alleged kidnapping
ABC-7 has learned new information about an alleged kidnapping at Horizon High School on Friday.
Forty-three-year-old Carlos Holcombe is charged with aggravated kidnapping. El Paso Sheriff’s investigators say he took a 12-year-old girl from the school’s parking lot.
Our ABC-7 I-team obtained court documents that reveal new details about what the girl says happened that day. Holcombe allegedly forced her into his truck at gunpoint.
The girl says she asked Holcombe if he was going to hurt her and and if she was ever going to see her family again. He then allegedly ordered the girl to keep her head down and put the gun to the back of her head.
The girl says Holcombe drove a short distance and then parked inside a garage. She says once inside, he covered her eyes with duct tape, tied her hands and raped her.
The victim gave detectives a detailed description of the suspect and his vehicle. A surveillance photo from Horizon High School shows a man matching the description. Authorities say Holcombe lives near the school. After the assault, the girl said Holcombe dropped her off at a movie theatre on the 12,000 block of Montana.
ABC-7 asked the Clint Independent School District to show us the security system that quickly delivered a picture of the suspect.
“Our team has already met once reviewing our camera placement that we have on all our campuses,” said Morris Aldridge, Clint ISD’s assistant superintendent for operations. “We’ve got a good system now in place but we’re always going to look to see what we can do better. We want to get to a point where we can go out and get license plate numbers as cars are coming in and out of the parking lot, especially at high school campuses.”
Aldridge said Horizon High school has 72 cameras on campus, one of which captured this image of the alleged kidnapper and led to his arrest. He said some cameras on campus will be replaced with newer ones over the next six months.
“If it had been where one of the new cameras were located, we would have been able to see the tattoos on the arm,” Aldridge said. “So we’re constantly looking at ways we can upgrade our systems and move forward with that. We’re going to look at everything. At this point I can’t tell you there is something we could have done differently. But what we are going to do is evaluate every step of the way along as a group and find out what we need to change to make it even more secure.”
Aldridge said Clint ISD started an anonymous alert system last year where parents and students can go online and report suspicious people hanging around a school.
