Loudoun County, VA high-school student, gun-toting illegal immigrant, linked to MS-13 gang: report

An illegal immigrant minor was arrested last year for carrying a gun and allegedly threatening to kill a fellow Virginia middle school student. A new report revealed that the suspect has an alleged affiliation with the brutal international MS-13 gang, sources with knowledge of the matter told ABC 7 News.

The student, who came to the country illegally, is now enrolled at Loudoun Valley High School, despite his May 2023 arrest connected to the incident at Blue Ridge Middle School. Parents are concerned about the situation and the school district has not been transparent. However, the sheriff's department asserted it was taking the matter seriously and confirmed there's MS-13 activity in the county, but indicated the situation is complex.

On Monday, at a Loudoun County school board meeting, all seven board members refused to answer questions about the migrant student. A reporter with the network was met with deafening silence after asking the board, "Are you comfortable with a student attending Loudoun Valley High School this year who previously threatened to kill a fellow student and was arrested for carrying a gun" and "What are you doing as a school board member to keep students safe from violence, gun violence, and gang activity at Loudoun Valley High School and other schools?"

An LCPS spokesperson released a statement outlining the district's security policies, but said they would not "publicly discuss an individual student's discipline."

"There is nothing more important to Loudon County Public Schools (LCPS) than the safety and welfare of its students and staff. The Division of Safety and Security, in conjunction with local law enforcement and public safety partners, has created a comprehensive safety and security plan to protect students, staff and visitors. This plan is equipped with multiple layers of redundancy, some visible, some not, to ensure a safe and secure environment for everyone," the spokesperson said. "In order to ensure the integrity of its efforts, LCPS does not publicly discuss all aspects of the security plan. It is also LCPS practice not to publicly discuss an individual student's discipline."

Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman told the network that the department has been notified about the situation.

"I'm aware of your concern in this particular person," Chapman said. "We're doing everything we can within our power to monitor what's going on to work within the system, to make sure that everybody that needs to know about this knows about it, and that we're keeping good track on this. We're doing everything, I think, that we can possibly do under the circumstances. Our job is to keep people safe and we really take that to heart and we do everything we can in our power to make sure we're delivering the best service that we possibly can."

Sheriff Chapman proceeded to confirm that there is MS-13 gang activity in the area, but could not go into details pertaining to the student because he is a juvenile.

"Anybody that's got ties, and anybody that might pose a threat to anybody else it does concern us," he continued. "And we look into those things very carefully, but we've got to do it in conjunction with the schools... as far as any particular threat or any particular person, I can't really get into that, because what you're talking about are juveniles, and so we're limited as to what we can say."

"We do have elements of MS-13 here in Loudoun County, and we try to stay up on it," Chapman told the network. "When you start talking about the schools, the one thing that's very important here in Loudoun County is that we have a very robust school resource officer program, so we kind of get to know who the kids are in schools, who might be problematic, who they hang out with when they're not in school when they should be in school. We try to make sure we're on top of all of that."