Houston, TX School Secretary Sets Fire to Avoid Meeting With Principal
This Is A Wild Story From Out Of The Houston ISD Where A School Secretary Went To Great Lengths To Avoid A Meeting, Now She's Wanted By Police.
Do you remember the movie "Office Space"? There's a character named "Milton" who gets screwed over throughout the movie and he threatens to burn down the office over his stapler. If you're not familiar...
Its safe to say that the person involved in the following story may have gotten her idea from this movie. Either way, she's in big trouble.
We Take You To Houston's C.E. Barrick Elementary School Where The Drama Unfolds.
According to KHOU, a school employee arrived early in the morning and while he was changing lightbulbs near the 5th grade classrooms, he was alerted through radio by the school's secretary that there was fire. He reportedly put out the fire using a fire extinguisher and said the fire was "weird" and that it "looked like a campfire piled up." when he spoke to investigators.
So Investigators Spoke To The School's Secretary About What Happened.
49-year-old Adriana Castorena-Narvaez, the school's secretary, claimed that she got to the school around 6:38 a.m. that day, saw the worker changing the lightbulbs in the school's main hallway and didn't notice any odor or anything burning in the front office when she got to work.
She then said she put her lunch in the break room and went to unlock her office, which is across the conference room, and noticed an odor of something burning when she sat at her desk. Castorena-Narvaez said she then left the front office to locate the worker but noticed he was no longer in the hallway.
But The Investigation Found Her Story Wasn't Adding Up...
According to officials, if there was a fire in the front office before the secretary got there, the fire would have caused more damage than what was found when they conducted the initial fire investigation.
After talking to the school's principal, who noticed it was odd the fire happened in the room across from Castorena-Narvaez's office, investigators claim Castorena-Narvaez lit materials at hand in the conference room on fire to avoid a meeting she was going to have with the principal.
Castorena-Narvaez was responsible for the school's finances and depositing cash from fundraising events and there were issues.
Back in September, the principal reportedly found out vendors had not been paid and that cash collected from multiple fundraisers in 2022 were not deposited into the school's account. The principal tried to ask the secretary about the financial issues, but Castorena-Narvaez said there was a family emergency and went home.
Castorena-Narvaez came back to work on Oct. 6 and another meeting was said to be scheduled to go over the financials, but she said there was a medical emergency once again and was taken to the ER.
The day of the fire just so happened to be the same day Castorena-Narvaez was set to come back to work from the previous emergency.
For going to extreme lengths to avoid a meeting with her boss, Castorena-Narvaez now has a warrant for her arrest on a charge of arson but more charges could likely be on the way.