WEIMAR, Texas – Two Weimar high school students were arrested over the weekend after one of them, a quarterback on the school's football team, allegedly tried to rob a rest home with a BB gun.
News of the arrests spread through the school Monday.
"Everybody's shocked that it actually happened," 10th grader Victoria Meyers said.
Juwan Lidell Almeida, 17, is charged with aggravated robbery and burglary. According to charging documents, Almeida went to the Parkview Manor Nursing home at 2 a.m. Friday armed with an Airsoft pistol and ordered employees to open the safe.
Before that could happen, a Weimar police patrol car pulled up to the home and Almeida allegedly fled. But investigators say he returned later that morning and told employees he was there to move the safe. He was arrested by Weimar police and Texas Rangers a short time later.
About an hour before the robbery attempt, Almeida allegedly burglarized a Texaco Station at 400 W. Main St in Weimar. About $25 in change was taken. Investigators say Almeida was driven to the service station by classmate Clemente Jose Mantica. He is charged in that burglary, and three others, including a break-in at Weimar High School the night before.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Mantica, 17, confessed that he and Almeida went to the school Thursday morning. Police found a broken window and learned that $60 had been taken from a teacher's desk. Almeida is not charged in the school burglary.
Mantica is facing a total of four burglary charges, including break-ins at the Boys and Girls Club at 101 W. Jackson where a computer was taken early Thursday morning, and at the Handy Stop Drive In at 301 W. Main, where a safe containing $650 was stolen Thursday.
Court documents name Almeida as a suspect in the other burglaries, but he is not charged in any of them.
Almeida was a quarterback for the Weimar Wildcats football team. He also played basketball at the high school according to Jon Wunderlich, superintendent for the Weimar Independent School District.
In October 2013, a school running back, Jakyle Williams, 18, was accused of shooting two men at a Halloween party at a VFW Hall at the Fayette County Fair Grounds. Williams is still awaiting trial.
As Weimar High students and teachers turned out Monday afternoon to cheer about a dozen other students headed to a University Interscholastic League competition in Austin, Wunderlich told Local 2 News he fears media attention created by the arrests overshadows the accomplishments of Weimar High School's 200 other students.
"And that's not fair," Wunderlich said. "The defining points actually are the kids that are the success stories. That's our normality here, that we win, we are successful, academically and athletically. That's our norm. This is out of the norm."
Almeida was arrested Friday and released after posting a $25,000 bond. Mantica is still being held in the Colorado County Jail on the burglary charges.