Parents speak out about what they say happened during fight at Albuquerque Public Schools elementary

ALBUQUERQUE, NM (KRQE) – News 13 showed video Wednesday of a fight between parents at SR Marmom Elementary School earlier this month. It ended with both parents being barred from campus.

Wednesday, News 13 heard from the mother who was punched. Thursday, News 13 spoke with the other parents involved in the incident for their side of the story.

Those parents asked to not be identified. However, they maintain they were not the aggressors in this incident. “Thursday afternoon, we went to go pick up the kids, we got through the entrance like we supposed to, and this lady has a habit. She speeds like she’s going to get into the pickup lane and last minute she cuts into the exit. It’s an exit only,” the man says.

He says after she parked in the handicapped lane, he approached her about it. “She was like, ‘so?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘This is a school. It was also a kid in the crosswalk with her mom and there was another lady backing up in her vehicle.’”

The couple says this is when it all escalated. “I said, ‘This is a school.’ I said, ‘You’re lucky my kids isn’t in our vehicle and you hit us.’ She was like, ‘Or what, monkey?’…I said, ‘Monkey? f*** you, you racist b****. Going through the exit. I was like you can hurt somebody!”

The man says the woman in the car asked what he was going to do about it and popped open her door. This is when he says his partner walked up. The couple says the woman inside the car swung at the woman from inside the car, and then outside the car. The couple says the woman was the initiator.

“I didn’t swing on her until she wouldn’t let go of my hair and we were inside her vehicle. That was the one hit I got off of her,” the woman says.

The next day, as parents were discussing the situation, the woman in the gray car’s husband got involved. “Out of nowhere, a dude goes, ‘That’s my wife! Shut up talking about MY WIFE.’ And I said, ‘Oh, YOU the husband.’ I was like, ‘I won’t hit a woman but I’ll hit a dude,’ you know what I’m sayin?,” the man says. The man says that argument never got physical.

“It should never have gone to this level. But if you’re going to threaten the safety of my children, I’m going to protect my children 100% by any means necessary. AND my fiancée. That’s going to happen,” the woman says, “If it’s 2022 and you get to be racist I get to put you in your place.”

The couple believes the charges—banning all parties involved from the elementary school campus—is unfair. The other woman in the fight disputed those allegations Wednesday saying she apologized for going through the exit and that this couple were the aggressors.

Both fathers involved in this are facing charges including disorderly conduct. Albuquerque Public Schools condemned the behavior in a statement Wednesday.