Former Arlington HS student waved fake gun on campus, causing lockdowns, warrant says
A former Arlington High School student confessed to waving a fake semiautomatic pistol out of a car on two occasions in November, causing authorities to believe there were genuine emergencies and initiate lockdowns, an arrest warrant says.
Ibrahim Ahmed Al Mafrachi, 18, is charged with two counts of exhibition, use, or threat of exhibition or use of firearms. About 2:45 p.m. on both Nov. 7 and Nov. 11, according to the warrant, Mafrachi was spotted pointing what appeared to be a silver handgun out of the driver’s side window of a blue Honda Civic slowly moving through a campus parking lot.
His actions, police said, left witnesses panicked and fearful they were in imminent danger.
Arlington police determined the suspect description and vehicle description were the same in both cases and identified the man in the car as Mafrachi with the help of witnesses and the school, the warrant says. Police eventually went to his family’s home, where they recovered the black and silver Umarex-brand semi-automatic pellet pistol used in both instances.
The warrant indicates Mafrachi was previously charged in October with aggravated robbery after he allegedly threatened a female victim with a black and silver semi-automatic handgun.
The Arlington Independent School District didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Multiple witnesses to the Nov. 7 incident said they saw a man driving past the Multipurpose Activity Center displaying a gun out of the window, according to the warrant. A female student reported it to the cheerleading coach, who alerted school security, and a school resource officer reported to the parking lot but couldn’t find anything. He requested Arlington officers to come to the scene.
A sweep of the parking lot and surrounding area didn’t reveal the suspect or his vehicle, according to the warrant. The lockdown was eventually lifted and police filed a report on the incident.
But, before officers could begin their follow-up investigation, there was another incident at the school on Nov. 11, the warrant shows. The details matched the earlier incident.
A man who was at the Chicken Express next to the high school called the front office to say he could see a man pointing a gun in the air as he drove through the school’s southeast parking lot, the warrant says. The car was also occupied by another passenger, the man reported.
The front office contacted security and another lockdown was initiated. Again, a school resource officer and Arlington officers couldn’t find the suspect or his vehicle anywhere on campus, according to the warrant.
But the school resource officer, cross-referencing the earlier case, determined it was the same suspect and vehicle in both instances. And Arlington police began working with witnesses and the school district to determine the identity of the man.
On Nov. 12, an Arlington officer spoke with the student who reported the first incident, and she said she recognized the suspect from her sign language class from last year, according to the warrant.
Police pulled the class roster for the sign language class and determined Mafrachi — who had withdrawn from the class due to truancy — fit the description, the warrant shows. They compiled a spread of photos of the 18-year-old, including his driver’s license photo.
The man who reported the second incident looked at one of the photos and said “that’s him right there,” according to the warrant. He later inspected all of the photos and said, according to the warrant, “I am very confident with the suspect I have chosen for this case.”
The student, too, was shown the pictures and identified the man as Mafrachi.
Officers showed up at the family’s home on Nov. 19 and Mafrachi’s sister came to the door and was asked to wake up her brother, the warrant shows. They then interviewed him and he at first denied exhibiting a handgun of any kind in the parking lot of the high school on either of the dates.
He later admitted to showing the handgun on two separate days, though he couldn’t remember the exact dates. He maintained it was a pellet pistol, not a firearm, police said.
Questioned by police about where it was, Mafrachi said it was in the glovebox of the blue Civic, which is owned by his sister, but officers couldn’t find it. He then said it was in his room and, again, officers couldn’t find it.
He later told police it was concealed in the kitchen and he went to remove it from a drawer.
Police noted Mafrachi’s father, who was present during the questioning, “was very cooperative, emotional and tearfully apologetic for his son’s actions,” according to the warrant. He told police his son refused to go to school.
The arrest warrant was filed in City of Arlington Municipal Court on Wednesday.
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 2:23 PM.
