A homeless man breached the campus of a Fort Worth girls’ school in August, but the incident is only now becoming public.
According to Fort Worth ISD, a malfunctioning door allowed the vagrant to enter the Young Women’s Leadership Academy (YWLA) on August 30—the day before Texas school districts were required to finish an audit of all campus doors.
Gov. Greg Abbott mandated the audit in response to the Uvalde elementary school mass shooting, where the shooter entered the school through an unlocked door.
At YWLA, a door on the west side of the building did not lock after a student entered.
Fort Worth ISD claimed the homeless man jiggled the handle of a door. The door opened, and he entered the school. The vagrant wandered the halls looking for a bathroom when a student saw him and notified a teacher.
Daniel Garcia, the district’s executive director of safety and security, said, “All this person was wanting to do was come in and use the bathroom,” when commenting on the security breach.
The Dallas Express reached out to Garcia to clarify how he could be sure of the vagrant’s motives but received no response.
“He came in and went immediately to the bathroom. The student went into the library and the librarian went and told the liaison staff member, and they both went to the bathroom,” Garcia said.
Staff members escorted the man out of the building after he finished using the bathroom, according to Garcia.
Garcia said, “Sometimes the door would close properly, and sometimes it wouldn’t. There were many times where the door was functional.”
The district works closely with Fort Worth police and informed them of the situation, said Garcia. He claimed the door was fixed promptly, and the district had increased its safety officer presence.
However, it still remains unclear if or when YWLA’s security audits were ever done.
Fort Worth police confirmed it would increase its presence “in this particular area to enhance public safety and to deter any potential incidents such as this.”
This incident occurred amidst the growing problem of vagrancy throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Recently, South Dallas homeowners have become upset by increasing vagrancy, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.