By Juan Montoya
A telephone call from an unknown person in California Tuesday morning warning of an impending mass shooting has forced Cameron County law enforcement to upgrade its threat level and harden its security measures at all county facilities.
Pct. 2 Constable Abel Gomez said he had decided to take "proactive" measures in response to the call and "err on the side of caution" after learning of the call. Today, there is a heavy presence of constable deputies in all county facilities and the courts.Gomez is in charge of providing security to all the county buildings in Brownsville. Other constables provide it if the buildings are in their precincts.
According to Gomez, a caller from California said that they had been video calling on Facetime with someone from Cameron County and that the person at the other end had said that "they" were going to shoot two specific individuals and then "take out as many as we can."Frightened, the caller from California dialed Cameron County and was connected to a staffer at the County Clerk's Office who then tried to transfer the caller to Gomez's office, but lost connection with the caller when she tried.
The county clerk staffer then relayed the information to the constables who "out of an abundance of caution" because of the spate of mass shooting recently, ordered the upgrade in security.
Gomez said that the clerk's staffer could not ascertain whether the threats were made to county employees or whether the intended targets were people who lived somewhere in the county."
"It wasn't kids from high school calling in death threats or anything like that," Gomez said. "We are in the process of trying to trace back the call to its point of origin to speak with that person directly and try to locate the Facetime user on this side. Until then, we will continue to be on an upgraded security mode."