School officials failed to immediately alert the community after a knife-wielding intruder slipped inside a Queens junior high school and threatened a boy in the bathroom, outraged parents told The Post.
The robber — who is still on the loose — held up the 11-year-old victim at Robert A. Van Wyck Junior High School, in Briarwood, during afternoon dismissal on Dec. 1, police said.
“Why weren’t the parents informed about it? Why did we get no phone calls about it?” fumed Sean Brewster, 51, as he picked up his son after school Thursday. “My son is afraid. That could have been him!” Three other parents told The Post they didn’t learn of the incident from the school until four days later.
Brewster, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for 13 years, said he only found out about the terrifying incident via news reports last week. School staff confirmed the knifepoint attack only after he approached them last week.
“The way they went about it was wrong, they should have told the parents and to this day they haven’t sent a letter home,” Brewster charged, adding, “I think a lot of parents don’t know what went on. They need more security here.”
The DOE did not say how notificatons to parents were made.
Another dad who found out through news reports said, “It scared me as a parent. The school should have been on top of informing parents, they need to be keeping our kids safe.”
Police said the 5-foot-2, 110-pound suspect, who appeared to be a teenager, got into to the school through a cafeteria entrance while aides and safety agents were distracted at dismissal, went to a bathroom and put a knife to the boy. The intruder demanded money the boy didn’t have, took his water bottle and, police sources said, threatened to kill him before running out.
Gregory Floyd, the president of the school safety agents union, blamed cutbacks that have seen 1,800 fewer safety agents since 2019.
On the day of the terrifying incident at Van Wyck, there was one supervisor and three safety agents at the school, Floyd said. Pre-pandemic, there would be a supervisor and six safety agents there.
The agents were outside at dismissal “to make sure there were no fights, no drama,” a school security source told The Post. ”This guy walked past the school aide at the cafeteria door.”
As for why parents weren’t alerted, the source said, “These principals don’t want to report crime. The less crime, the better my school looks. It’s the game the Board of Ed has played for years.”
A school crossing guard wasn’t aware either. Five school bus drivers found out through the media, and said the school hadn’t shared a police sketch circulated by the NYPD or seen it until a Post reporter presented it.
One driver said the school went into lockdown after the incident but at the time, they didn’t know what the lockdown was for. Another raged that Van Wyck “needs to keep these kids safe. We’ll get the guy [if they won’t].”
Prideal Singh, owner of Best Market & Deli on 85th Avenue and Parsons Blvd. encountered the suspect apparently not long after the thug fled the school, cops said.
Singh said he appeared to be “high” and in his early 20s. The man got into it with Singh after the deli owner proofed him when he tried to buy beer.
“I asked him for ID and he pulled his mask down and spit on me. I grabbed onto the phone under the counter and then he grabbed the scanner and tried to pull it. I turned his hand and he knocked over a box of croissants and went outside. He asked me to come outside and had a hand in his jacket, I didn’t see a knife but I held the door and he eventually left,” the storeowner recalled.
Singh said the suspect — who cops said also tried to cut up a 51-year-old during his disturbing spree — was a first-time customer.
A city Department of Education spokesman said school leadership “sent an initial notification to the community the Friday after the [Wedesday] incident. When more details were confirmed by the NYPD over the weekend, the school provided a fuller explanation immediately on the following Monday.”
The DOE spokesman added that the Van Wyck school has now “changed both entry and dismissal procedures to ensure that all active doors are fully monitored by School Safety Agents at all times after school. Additionally, students participating in the after-school program are now escorted to their programming to ensure safety.”
