Parent Brings Three Pistols To Loudoun School Session

The mother of a student at Round Hill Elementary School in rural western Loudoun County was committed to a hospital psychiatric unit yesterday after she showed up at the school for a conference with three loaded pistols in her purse, authorities said.

The 45-year-old woman did not take the weapons -- a .38-caliber pistol and two .22-caliber pistols -- out of her purse and did not threaten anyone at the school, officials said. She was not charged with a crime, although it is a felony to bring a weapon into a school, Loudoun sheriff's office spokesman Kraig Troxell said.

Nancy E. McManus, principal of the 554-student school, sent a letter home to parents yesterday.

"What I can tell you, emphatically, is that Round Hill Elementary School is a safe place to send your child," she wrote. "Even though we recently have installed a new security system, what today's incident proves is that the human factor is the most important when it comes to keeping our school safe. Today it was the observant nature of [Assistant Principal Kirsten] O'Hara and the office staff that kept our school safe. They are to be thanked and commended for this effort."

The parent, who lives in Round Hill but was not identified, called the school at 8:45 a.m. to request a conference with an administrator, Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde B. Byard said.

After she was buzzed through the school's locked front doors 20 minutes later, she began acting "upset and irrational," Byard said.

"Then, at one point, the parent asked if she should put her purse aside" before the conference began, he said.

O'Hara quickly locked the purse in an office, sensing something was wrong, Byard said. Then she made conversation with the woman, stalling for time, while school staffers called the sheriff's office for assistance.

"It's not that this woman was threatening," Byard said. "It was more that [staffers] were concerned that she was ill and needed some help."

Sheriff's deputies began interviewing the woman and asked whether she was armed.

"She said, 'Yes, I have guns in my purse,' " Byard said.

The deputies found the loaded guns in the purse, authorities said. It could not be determined yesterday whether the woman had a license to carry concealed weapons.

The woman was quietly led out of the school with a coat over her handcuffs so that students would not be aware of the incident, Byard said.

After a mental evaluation, the woman was taken to Inova Loudoun Hospital's Cornwall Campus in Leesburg on a temporary detention order, Troxell said.

Sheriff's officials are reviewing the incident with the Loudoun commonwealth's attorney's office to determine whether charges should be brought.