A 19-year-old listed as being from Waynesboro, but not a current student of Waynesboro Public Schools, never attended Waynesboro High School, from what we’ve been told, forced his way into Westwood Hills Elementary School early Wednesday morning, shooting an adult staff member, then turning the gun on himself.
Waynesboro Police identified the young man as Anthony I. Ignatiadis-Isabelle, 19.
Googling the name, there was an Anthony Isaac Ignatiadis-Isabelle of Waynesboro listed as the great-grandson of a Bluefield, West Virginia, man, who died in 2012.
I tried several different approaches to backcheck whether Ignatiadis-Isabelle had a prior criminal history, and found nothing in the adult criminal system, through a search of online court records.
That’s about as close as we can get at this early stage in this story toward learning more about the shooter’s background.
The item about Ignatiadis-Isabelle not being a current Waynesboro Public Schools student or a Waynesboro High School graduate came from Jeffrey Cassell, the school system’s superintendent, at a Wednesday afternoon press conference at City Hall.
Closing that circle:
“I can confirm that this the suspect was not a student of Waynesboro Schools, and had not attended Waynesboro High School,” was what Cassell directly had to say about that matter.
ICYMI
Police Chief David Shaw, at the outset of the news conference, confirmed for reporters the details of a release that was sent out by Virginia State Police earlier in the afternoon – Shaw’s PD does not have a routine for communicating directly with local media outlets, instead relying on posts to the department’s Facebook page.
This is a major flaw that we’ve been hoping for years will one day be corrected.
Today would seem to reinforce the urgency of getting information out to the public as quickly, and accurately, as possible.
The details that Shaw read aloud include that the breach of the school by a “suspicious individual” was reported to police at 9:12 a.m.
Shaw said Ignatiadis-Isabelle “forced entry into the school,” and later answered, in a follow-up question from a reporter, that “this was not through means of, at least preliminarily, unlocked means to get in. This was forced into the school.”
Police officers were on the scene by 9:15 a.m., and “there they located, in the library, the suspect dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Shaw said.
There were no students in the library at the time, according to Shaw, though Cassell hedged a bit on that point a little later.
“I do not believe students were in the library at the time of the incident. We do not think so. The library was unoccupied, to the best of my knowledge,” the superintendent said.
An adult staff member, whose name has not been made public at this stage, suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, and was treated at Augusta Health and subsequently released, the police chief said.
The relative lack of information from police is a function of the PD using the “this is an active investigation” tactic, even as the suspect was already dead by his own hand when officers located him in the school library.
“It’s not because we don’t want to share information, but we have to protect the integrity of this investigation,” Shaw said. “We understand there’s a lot of information that’s going to float around in the next few days, rumors and also just some misinformation. It’s our responsibility to deliver to the community the facts and the information that’s appropriate, and all that will come in due time.”
Indeed, social media practically melted down within minutes of the news of the shooting getting out into the public domain, dominated by people who know somebody whose second cousin’s best friend is married to a nurse who positively ID’d this or that suspect and victim – including a few who advanced the notion that it was a student at the elementary school.
There was also a good amount of online chatter about the lack of information from the school system as to the safety – and location – of students as the situation was playing out.
I’ll defend the administration on this one; breaking news events like this one can very quickly devolve into the fog of war.
It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback.
“We know how difficult it is to wait for information when your child is involved in an emergency situation. Your willingness to follow the established reunification procedures allowed school officials and law enforcement to account for all students and reunite them with their families in a safe and orderly manner,” said Cassell, of the move by administrators to remove students from the school and relocate them to Westminster Presbyterian Church, a three-minute drive from the school campus, noting that “coming to the school during a lockdown was pointless, because you weren’t allowed on school campus. It takes time to coordinate all of those things and make an announcement that has factual information.”
“We also want to thank Westminster Presbyterian Church, which served as our reunification site for our families. Their help was immense in bringing families back together in this trying situation,” Cassell said.
As Cassell said those words there, about the trying situation, his voice started to break.
“Today is, excuse me, if you don’t get emotional today, you never will. Today is the day every school system hopes they never have to deal with,” said Cassell, who announced in July that he will retire from his job on Dec. 31.
Cassell has been the superintendent of Waynesboro Public Schools since 2013.
Westwood Hills, for obvious reasons, will be closed on Thursday, and if they’re smart, they’ll just go ahead and call it a week there and get things going again after Labor Day.
The other schools in the city school system, in the meantime, “not because of any indications of any further threats, but will see a presence at Waynesboro Public Schools for the remainder of the week of additional law enforcement there,” the police chief, Shaw, said.
“That is just to provide some extra reassurance, security, and parameters with our school partners to make sure that we have that presence there for continuity,” Shaw said.
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Chris Graham
