Gunman who killed himself at Virginia elementary school was a former student, police say

A 19-year-old former student of Westwood Hills Elementary School forced his way into the building through a locked rear door on Wednesday morning, shot and wounded a staff member, and then killed himself in the school library, according to a joint statement from Waynesboro police and school officials. Three days later, the small Shenandoah Valley city is still without an explanation for why it happened, and parents are pressing the school system for one.

Police identified the gunman as Anthony I. Ignatiadis-Isabelle, 19, of Waynesboro. He had attended Westwood Hills as a child and later Kate Collins Middle School in the same district, but was not enrolled anywhere in Waynesboro Public Schools at the time of the attack, according to new details the school system released Friday. Investigators have not disclosed a motive and say they have found no indication he knew the staff member he shot.

How the attack unfolded

Waynesboro police say they received a call at approximately 9:12 a.m. on September 2 reporting a suspicious person on the grounds of Westwood Hills Elementary, on Rosser Avenue. According to the timeline police released this week, Ignatiadis-Isabelle had driven to the area and parked at nearby Ridgeview Park, then walked roughly half a mile to the back of the school property before forcing his way in by firing through a rear door and breaking through it.

Officers, including school resource officers already assigned to the building, reached the scene within about 90 seconds of the initial call and located Ignatiadis-Isabelle inside the library roughly three minutes after the call came in, according to a Facebook update Waynesboro police posted Friday evening. He was already dead of what investigators described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a 20-gauge shotgun. No students were in the library at the time.

One adult staff member, whom officials have not publicly named, was shot and suffered a wound described as non-life-threatening. The employee was treated at a hospital and released the same day. No children were injured. Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Washington field division responded to the scene alongside Waynesboro police, Augusta County sheriff's deputies and Virginia State Police, though local police have remained the lead agency on the investigation.

Students and staff were moved to a "designated staging area" and later reunited with families at Westminster Presbyterian Church, a few blocks from the school. By late Wednesday morning, Waynesboro Public Schools confirmed on social media that everyone from the building was "accounted for and safe."

Westwood Hills serves about 380 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, in a city of roughly 23,000 people tucked in the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains. Waynesboro Public Schools operates seven schools in total, and district officials said Friday that all of them would see an increased police presence in the days ahead, even though the investigation has produced no indication that any other campus was targeted or at risk.

An investigation with no answers yet

Waynesboro Police Chief David Shaw credited the school's lockdown drills with preventing further harm. In the department's Friday update, investigators said they have found "no evidence that anyone else was directly involved" and that Ignatiadis-Isabelle "appears to have acted alone."

"The quick-thinking and heroic actions of Westwood Hills staff in initiating lockdown procedures upon immediate notification on Wednesday morning undoubtedly saved lives."

Beyond his age, hometown and past enrollment in the district, police have released almost nothing about Ignatiadis-Isabelle. They have not said how he obtained the shotgun, whether he had any documented mental health history, or what drew him back to an elementary school he had not attended in years. Waynesboro Superintendent Jeffrey Cassell has repeatedly acknowledged the gap. "We recognize that we do not yet have all of the answers," Assistant Superintendent Ryan Barber said this week, adding that the division does not yet have a clear picture of "the concerns and emotions surrounding this situation," let alone the shooter's motive.

Governor Abigail Spanberger, who posted about the attack as it was unfolding, wrote that her "heart is with these young students, their parents and families, and the teachers and staff at the school" and thanked first responders, while noting that Augusta County and Waynesboro officials were handling the response and the flow of information to residents.

Parents want more than a lockdown drill worked

For many Westwood Hills families, the fact that the lockdown succeeded has not been enough to settle nerves about what could have gone wrong. A parent, Sarah Mendoza, started a petition this week calling on the district to hold a public meeting with Superintendent Cassell, disclose more about how the gunman breached the building, and lay out concrete plans for counseling and physical security upgrades, according to reporting on the petition drive. "We want to know about the door locking," Mendoza said, referring to accounts from families that some classroom doors did not lock properly during the lockdown.

Meghan Yeatts, whose third-grader attends Westwood Hills, said her son told her his classroom door would not fully secure during the lockdown, and argued the district owes families a fuller accounting of what happened room by room. She said additional communication from the school system, even incremental updates, would help parents feel less in the dark than they have since Wednesday.

Assistant Superintendent Barber said the division has brought in outside security consultants from VACORP, the insurance pool that covers many Virginia public bodies, to review the building's doors, locks and access points, and that findings will inform a broader security review across the seven-school district. He said the division is also compiling counseling resources for students and staff and has set up a webpage for families seeking support.

What happens next

Westwood Hills Elementary has been closed since the shooting and will remain shut through Tuesday, September 8, according to the district's release; classes are scheduled to resume Wednesday, September 9. Because the shooting took place in the school library, officials said a temporary library space will be set up in another classroom while the room where Ignatiadis-Isabelle died is renovated before students return.

The Waynesboro School Board has scheduled a meeting for September 8 that will include time for public comment, giving parents their first formal opportunity to question officials directly about the security review and the district's plan for reopening the building. Police say their investigation, including any final determination of a motive, remains active, and Chief Shaw's department has not set a timetable for closing the case.

Virginia law has required public schools to hold at least two lock-down drills every school year since the mid-2010s, and district officials in Waynesboro have pointed to that training as the reason the attack did not turn into a mass-casualty event. But the petition circulating among Westwood Hills parents makes clear that, for a school community now confronting the reality of an armed intruder rather than a drill, credit for a lockdown that worked has not translated into confidence about what changes next. In the meantime, Waynesboro police have said they will increase patrols at all of the city's public schools as students and staff prepare to return to a building where, for one morning in September, the routine safety drills that Virginia schools rehearse each year were suddenly not a drill at all.