UPDATE: According to News-Press sources, the suspect has been apprehended by the Falls Church City Police Department.
Falls Church’s Thomas Jefferson Elementary School Principal Vincent Baxter alerted parents and guardians of students at his school Friday of a “suspicious person described as a white male in his 40s with graying hair and a beard, a receding hairline, weathered, tanned skin and appearing homeless” loitering around the T.J. campus last week, and urged that children be reminded to “execise caution when walking to or from school and to walk with others whenever possible.”
Late last Thursday afternoon, daycare staff reported to police that a man fitting the description was “watching the playground after school,” according to Principal Baxter. “He was seated outside the playground area on the Seaton Lane side of the school where the wall meets the fence at the start of the trail behind the fence. Police came but he had left the scene by the time they arrived.” Another staff member noticed the same man in the area on a morning earlier in the week, and information was received that the man was later seen near St. James School in Falls Church around 8 p.m. Friday morning, the man was spotted on T.J. school grounds near the trailers. Police were notified, but the man had again left the scene by the time they arrived.
The man is described by Baxter as “wearing a dark shirt, dark shoes and a backpack.”
