At approximately 2:15 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 9, shots rang out around Thomas S. Wootton High School as 16-year-old Kahylil White-Villatoro allegedly fired at and struck a fellow 16-year-old male student under the first-floor Best Buddies mural in a targeted shooting that left nearby communities stunned and county officials scrambling for a response. Prior to shots being fired, White-Villatoro allegedly texted a friend to bring him a backpack that contained a 9-millimeter “ghost gun,” a privately-assembled, untraceable firearm that lacks a manufacturer’s applied serial number, and later threatened a 15-year-old female student with the weapon but claimed it was not a real firearm upon the female student’s adverse reaction.
The Feb. 9 shooting was not the first gun-related threat Wootton HS has faced. Alex Ye, the Wootton student arrested in 2024 over his 129-page manifesto expressing a desire to commit a mass act of violence at his school, was sentenced to 12 months in prison followed by five years of probation last May. Those year-old fears became a sudden reality in the minutes following 2:15, when nobody knew the extent of the violence planned.
“We were all pretty surprised when we first heard about it, and there was a lot of speculation and rumours that spread immediately after people found out,” Wootton HS senior Mason Liu said. “I was in one of the rooms where the SWAT team had to extract a student who was a witness, and so that whole experience felt unreal. They came in with guns pointed in formation, like something out of a movie almost.”
As the high school went into hold and then lockdown procedure, police forces rapidly descended on the school, clearing rooms and aiding in the evacuation while operating with limited information and an abundance of caution.
“We were dispatched at 2:15 for a shooting inside Wootton High School,” Rockville City Police Department Deputy Chief of Police Barry Dufek said. “When we arrived on scene we located a victim with a gunshot wound, and the point I want to hone in on is that we acted responsibly with a short response time and we entered quickly as the officers are trained to do.”
The suspect, later identified as White-Villatoro, was taken into police custody off Wootton grounds at around 3:30 p.m. The weapon thought to be used in the shooting was recovered later in the evening, according to City of Rockville Police. Around 4:30 p.m., students were led by officers onto buses that would take them to the parent-child reunification site at Robert Frost Middle School, which had been communicated to parents earlier. The evacuation and reunification process dragged on for hours, with many Wootton HS staff members only leaving Frost MS late in the evening.
“I understand sort of why the administration decided to handle reuniting students with parents like that, but ultimately I think it was really inconvenient for everyone involved, including staff,” Liu said. “They had traffic backed up to neighborhood roads, parent lines in the freezing cold, and a very chaotic and crowded environment where I feel like not a lot of students knew about the details or process of checking out.”
White-Villatoro is being charged as an adult with attempted second-degree murder, along with additional counts of first and second-degree assault and possession of a dangerous weapon on school property. The suspect is being held without bond. The victim, who knew the suspect, was taken to a hospital during the lockdown and will survive his injuries.
Shortly after 9 p.m. the same day, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor released the county’s first full statement on the shooting, expressing dismay over the incident’s occurrence, sympathy for those affected and informing the Wootton community that school would open the following day. In a communication sent to Wootton families at the end of the Feb. 10 school day, Taylor justified the normal school schedule as intended to “[ensure] that students and staff were surrounded by helpful adults, mental health professionals and peers, rather than processing a distressing event in isolation or through social media without support.” The decision, however, drew pushback from students and staff alike, with notably high student absence rates on Feb. 10-11, though student absences on those days were excused, and students that did show up to school received no instruction or assessments.
“I get this whole ‘establishing normality’ reason for going back to school, but I think it’s at least unfair for teachers to have to go back immediately the day after, especially after they were stuck at Frost [MS] until late in the evening the day of the shooting,” Liu said.
Superintendent Taylor and MCPS Board of Education President Grace Rivera-Oven would also release a joint statement to the broader MCPS community prior to the end of the school day on Feb. 10, presenting a united front and reaffirming the school system’s commitment to student safety. Though the statement revealed few details about the county’s plans to bolster school security and mainly echoed previous MCPS talking points, it was seen as an important message to stress the school district’s leaders’ focus on the issue. Rivera-Oven did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our thoughts are with the injured student, their family, friends and the entire Wootton community,” Taylor and Rivera-Oven said in a statement. “This should never happen in a space dedicated to learning, growing and community.”
As Wootton students returned to school full-time later in the Feb. 9-13 week, they would have noticed an increased security presence around the school, including police officers. The shooting has reignited debates surrounding the role of law enforcement in protecting schools, especially around the School Resource Officer (SRO) program, which was effectively terminated in 2021 by sitting Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich as calls for racial justice swept the nation, a decision that some MCPS Board of Education members critiqued as bypassing their deliberative process and authority. The program, which assigned one police officer to each MCPS high school, enjoyed support from all high school principals and police departments, who noted that SROs often built rapports in their high school environments and contributed to a sense of student security. They have since been replaced by the Community Engagement Officer (CEO) program, which instead assigns one officer to a cluster of schools, and unlike the SRO program, primarily sees officers stationed outside schools as opposed to inside the buildings. At the time of shots fired at Wootton, the CEO for the cluster including Wootton was reportedly addressing a separate issue at Lakewood Elementary School, though the Rockville City Police Department noted the officer rushed back to Wootton to serve upon hearing of the incident.
Since the shooting, however, numerous public-facing officials have called for a return to the pre-2021 SRO system, including Montgomery County Councilmember Dawn Luedtke, Rockville City Council Member Adam Van Grack and Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy, who called the decision to end the program a “terrible mistake.” Those that disapprove of further use of resources on police include former Gaithersburg mayoral candidate Tiffany Kelly, who in a Facebook response to Luedtke, characterised the renewed efforts as “anti-Blackness.” Superintendent Taylor, when asked about the possibility of an SRO-like system, only commented that “all options are on the table.”
“Certainly the SRO program attracted some controversy in 2021 when the county was taking another look at the optics of cops in schools,” an MCPS teacher said under condition of anonymity. “I think generally the police presence made students feel safer, just knowing there was someone in the building whose job it was to protect and serve. I can absolutely see why it could be a good idea to bring that presence back.”
Either way, police departments countywide are prepared for such incidents, and if the by-the-book response from emergency services to Wootton’s call was any indication, Montgomery County is prepared for a rapid, effective response in spite of reduced police foothold in the schools themselves.
“Incidents such as these are unfortunately something that are a reality in the world today, and as such, are something that Montgomery County First Responders take very seriously and train for,” Executive Officer of the Montgomery County Department of Police (MCPD) Special Operations Bureau Lieutenant Gregory Chmiel said. “Moving forward, MCPD will work closely with Rockville City Police, Montgomery County Fire/Rescue, Montgomery County [Sheriff’s] Department, Montgomery County Public Schools and others to review the event and actions taken in order to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for future training and security to ensure that we continue to provide the level of service expected of us, and keep the residents of and visitors to Montgomery County safe.”
Incidents of this nature are always emblematic of underlying issues at play. As of this writing, prosecutors are still examining evidence to piece together a full picture of the incident, and the victim is still under hospital care, with his mother telling local news he still faces several surgeries before his recovery process can conclude. Wootton community members have criticised MCPS handling of school safety prior to the shooting, including regularly unlocked external entrances and a safety audit conducted last summer that was not properly followed-through on. Superintendent Taylor has announced that an AI safety technology pilot program would be launched at three MCPS high schools beginning March 2. One of the pilot high schools, Col. Zadok Magruder High School, experienced its own targeted shooting in 2022, also involving a ghost gun. In an era where gun violence seems to be more common than ever before, MCPS is dedicating significant time and resources to making schools safer.
“The safety and well-being of every student and staff member is our highest priority,” Taylor said. “We continue to work closely with law enforcement, mental health professionals and community partners to protect our students and ensure our schools remain places where students can learn, grow and thrive. During this painful time, we will continue to stand together to provide care, support and safety for all.”
