Raleigh Woman Charged After Student Brought Machete to East Garner Elementary

An 11-year-old's decision to retrieve a machete from a vehicle parked at East Garner Elementary on Jones Sausage Road sent the school into a Code Red lockdown last month, and court records filed Friday now name a Raleigh adult as criminally responsible for the weapon being there.

Gloria Yesenia Nieves, 44, of Raleigh, was charged on two counts: weapons on educational property (not a gun) and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. She posted a $5,000 bond Friday night and is scheduled to appear at the Wake County Justice Center on April 6.

The incident unfolded just before noon on February 25 when the student became upset during a parent meeting with school administrators at East Garner Elementary, a Wake County Public School System campus. The student left the building, went to a vehicle outside, and retrieved a machete, which the Garner Police Department identified as a bladed weapon. The student then attempted to force re-entry into the building. School staff locked down the campus immediately to keep both the student and the accompanying adult outside.

Officers arrived around noon and the school's Code Red lasted roughly 23 minutes, from 12:05 p.m. until cleared at 12:28 p.m. Police said students and staff inside the building were never in danger. School administrators acknowledged the speed of the response: "We are proud of the manner in which our staff and students responded to the lockdown. We are also grateful to first responders and our security team for their swift response."

The adult with the student left the campus before police made any arrest that day. It took more than a month for charges to materialize. Court documents describe the critical connection: the student "committed an act of assaulting a government employee by advancing at her with a machete knife obtained from inside of the vehicle of Gloria Nieves." That language, embedded in the contributing-to-delinquency charge, establishes that the machete did not come from inside the school; it was accessible in a car on school grounds.

Under North Carolina law, possession of a weapon on educational property is a criminal offense that applies to bladed weapons, not only firearms, and the statute reaches adults who enable a juvenile to bring a weapon onto campus. The two-count charge against Nieves reflects both the presence of the weapon and the allegation that her actions put an 11-year-old in a position to threaten a school employee with it.

February 25 was also the day Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh went into a separate Code Red after an 18-year-old student was found with a loaded handgun on campus. Wake County Public School System officials confirmed the two incidents were unrelated. East Garner then entered a second lockdown the following morning, February 26, a Code Yellow triggered by law enforcement activity in the surrounding neighborhood.

With Nieves due in court April 6, the case will test how North Carolina prosecutors pursue adults whose vehicles effectively function as weapons storage at school drop-off, a gap in campus security that no amount of on-site screening can close.