Detective describes school operation during standoff

For Detective Joyce Williams and several other Suffolk police officers, a day that started unremarkably quickly turned into a test of their ability to project calm into the midst of a crisis.

By 9:30 a.m., Williams was at the scene of a tense situation on William Reid Drive. A suspect, who at the end of the day would apparently take his own life, had barricaded himself inside a house when Virginia State Police tried to serve arrest warrants.

Behind the small, vinyl-clad bungalow was a clear line of sight to Elephant’s Fork Elementary School, where more than 700 students and staff had started an ordinary day.

Witnesses say that when troopers tried to serve Abernathy at 8:30 a.m. — for arson and a fraud-related offense — he fled on foot into the Sadler Heights neighborhood.

Pursued by the troopers, he arrived back at the house in a van he stole after threatening to kill an elderly couple. He sprinted inside and then refused to open the door.

Coupled with the fact that the extent of Abernathy’s firepower and his intentions were both unknown quantities, the proximity of the house to the school and open space in between meant the “immediate decision” to lock down Elephant’s Fork was “pretty routine,” Williams said.

Another factor was the mobile classrooms exposed at the side of the school, she said.

“We moved everyone, including staff, from the front of the school to the rear,” Williams said, adding that she and a couple of Suffolk SWAT team officers were asked “to go into the school and make that happen.”

Williams said Wednesday she thought the decision to evacuate already had been made when she arrived. Two Suffolk police were already inside the school.

The gym and cafeteria are “very safe into the interior,” Williams said, so lunch cycles were continued like any regular day, and videos were shown in the gym.

“It seemed very orderly,” she said. “My goal was to keep it as calm as possible and to alleviate all the fear as much as possible. I wanted the kids to believe this was a planned, safety-police drill we were going to do. I said (to the other officers), ‘Let’s clap, and high-five all the kids.’ I think I saw (only) two or three kids that got a little bit teary.”

Williams said she coordinated the evacuation with Capt. Robert Ross and Detective Sgt. Gary Myrick.

Other Suffolk officers involved, she said, included Sgt. Lance Callis, Detective William Shockley and officers Casey Thomas, Chad Hooker and Jerry Fowler.

Officer Tiffany Felder had rookie police officer Christina Jaramillo under her wing, according to Williams, and Suffolk Fire and Rescue’s Firefighter/Medic Marc Triplett acted as the SWAT team medic.

Kids and staff moved away from the front of the building, Williams said, the lead officers began developing an evacuation plan on the fly.

“We went out back and began to look for a viable route to get out to (U.S. Route) 58,” she said.

“We were able to find an area directly at the rear of the playground. Fortunately, the area was very well protected; it was completely out of the line of sight of the suspect’s home. No danger or any harm would come to the children bringing them out into that area.”

They found a section of woods between the playground and 58 that had some growth, Williams said, but not so much that it couldn’t be dealt with.

Williams and two or three SWAT team members began clearing a path, she said. Buses started lining up after school administrators called in drivers living nearby, and city employees in the Public Works Department brought in clearing equipment.

The eastbound exit ramp onto Godwin Boulevard was blocked, and five or six pieces of plywood were laid down, overlapping, to create a solid path, she said.

“I was literally kicking down pine cones because I didn’t want any children to roll their ankle,” Williams said.

Williams said that as officers inside the school helped staff send children across the playground toward the buses one class at a time — special-needs classes first — human lines were formed either side of the plywood path.

During the operation, she said, two tactical-response state troopers patrolled the roof of the school.

“A few of the kids came to the embankment a little bit fearful, so we carried them,” Williams said.

“We were high-fiving them, and clapping them and cheering them, (saying) ‘Good teamwork,’ and told them they’d get to go home early.”

Dismissal of classes began shortly before 1 p.m., and the operation was complete by just after 2 p.m., according to the school district.

“In the end, I really, truly had no idea we had moved over 700 kids and teachers,” she said. “It really did go that smoothly.”