Man Charged With Assaulting Homeless Woman At Charity Offices

A homeless man has been charged with assaulting a homeless woman one evening inside the Leesburg headquarters of the Good Shepherd Alliance, raising questions about how they got into the facility after working hours.

Good Shepherd, a Christian organization that operates homeless shelters across the county, uses the building on Sycolin Road for its staff operations and to provide services to homeless people during the day. The building usually closes at 5 p.m., Good Shepherd officials said.

Leesburg police said that the assault, which involved inappropriate touching, occurred about 8:30 p.m. Feb. 2. Isaiah Marchella Gant, 42, has been charged with assault and battery.

Before the incident, the woman and Gant were waiting in the Good Shepherd Alliance parking lot for a bus to take them to the county's overnight warming shelter in Lucketts, said Lt. Jeffrey Dube, a Leesburg police spokesman. Dube said a witness told police the assault happened inside the building.

Police said it was unclear how the two got in the building. Good Shepherd officials said that the building was locked and that no one was there to let them in.

"There are instances when people work later, but we don't let [the homeless] in," said Lyle Werner, the organization's director. "We've investigated this, and as far as we can tell from the time sheets, there wasn't anybody here."

Gant was being held at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center awaiting trial, Dube said.

Werner said she did not envision changing security procedures.

"There's nothing for us to do," she said. "This wasn't someone in our care."

Last spring, a homeless man who had struggled with mental illness stabbed an employee at Good Shepherd's homeless shelter on Ryan Road in Ashburn, using a kitchen knife. After the stabbing, Good Shepherd officials said they thought that security at the shelter, which has 24-hour staffing, security cameras and lighted paths, was adequate.

"I have no doubt about the Good Shepherd Alliance's passion for serving the homeless," said Andy Johnston, executive director of Loudoun Cares, a health and human services nonprofit group. "But if I had these two incidents in this time frame, I would want to review all of our security procedures, all of our training procedures. I would want to visit other homeless-serving organizations and see how they're providing services."

The incident Feb. 2 occurred after weeks of public debate about finding a suitable site for an emergency warming center. Last winter, Good Shepherd allowed homeless people to sleep inside the Sycolin Road building on bitterly cold nights. The organization's leaders announced in September that they would no longer do so because the building was too small, which prompted a search by county officials, churches and nonprofit groups for another location.

The Lucketts facility opened in late December as an interim warming center, and county and town officials hope to open a more centrally located center in Leesburg by next winter.