SPRINGFIELD, VA – In Springfield, Virginia, an unsettling incident took place in a local children’s daycare where two educators were wounded by a seemingly unprovoked gunfire attack. The suspect of the shooting has been reported as detained by local law enforcement.
Local authorities from the Fairfax County Police Department informed that both of the injured educators were immediately transported to nearby medical facilities. Their injuries have been categorized as ‘non-life threatening’.
In a press conference later in the day, Deputy Chief Brooke Wright reaffirmed that all children present at the incident site remained unscathed and had been released to their parents.
The call to the authorities regarding a shooting at Springfield’s KinderCare was received around 2:15 in the afternoon. Officers were swiftly dispatched to the incident site in the city’s Bauer Drive segment, Wright explained.
The suspect has been identified as Julio Pascual Sejas, a 41-year-old Arlington native. Wright issued an impassioned plea for public assistance to locate Sejas. By the evening, around 6:30 PM, detectives reportedly found and arrested him at Dulles International Airport.
It seems Sejas had come to KinderCare seeking a woman with whom he had a prior relationship. However, the nature of Sejas’s connection to the woman, a teacher at the daycare, was neither confirmed nor elaborated on. Wright mentioned Sejas fired three rounds through the front door using his pistol when the woman did not grant him entry.
Despite the unnerving confrontation and the presence of over 70 children inside the building at the time, Wright assured that the children were likely oblivious to the way the day transpired. She maintained that the kids had no awareness of the shooting incident.
Sejas is now faced with seven hefty charges, including two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and three counts of shooting into an educational establishment.