A Fox News reporter hugged her son on camera as he came out of a Denver high school where a shooting occurred on Wednesday.
Alicia Acuna, a reporter for the station’s Denver bureau, was reporting at the scene of East High School when she saw her son. She took a moment from her work to hug him and ask him if he was alright.
“There’s no way you would have let your kid walk by,” Acuna said, referring to her brief pause in her reporting.
She said her son kept her updated about what was happening at the school, and her sister was passing on information that she was getting from her daughter.
Local police are searching for a teenager who they say shot two administrators at the school while being patted down before fleeing. The administrators were taken to the hospital with one in serious but stable condition and the other in surgery in critical condition.
Police said the student used a handgun and fired multiple shots.
Acuna has a total of three children who are students at the school, and two who graduated from it. All of her children were able to leave the school safely.
She said she was sitting at her desk working on a different story when she received texts from her son detailing the situation. The son said he was at a school assembly when police and ambulances arrived and officers began guarding the doors.
Acuna said her niece was hiding in a closet while texting with her mother.
She said she asked the school’s superintendent about the “safety plan” the alleged shooter was under, in which he was scheduled to be searched at the start of school every day. The journalist said she and many other parents were unaware that their children were going to school with someone who needed to be patted down regularly.
She said the superintendent said other parents were not told about the safety plan to protect the student’s privacy.
“As a parent, my question is, what about the safety and the concerns that we have for all of our students going in?” Acuna said. “So, there’s a tremendous amount of frustration right now with regard to this student safety plan that we didn’t know about.”
Sandra Smith, who was co-anchoring coverage of the shooting, told Acuna when she saw her son that she could step aside if she needed to. John Roberts, the other anchor, also later told Acuna that she could go be with her son or bring him to her if she needed.