School Intruder Was Convicted Sex Offender, Police Say

By Michael Owens
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: December 4, 2008

BRISTOL, Va. – The man police say barricaded himself in a High Point Elementary School closet Tuesday is a convicted sex offender with a history of violent behavior and mental illness documented in police and court records.
William Gerald Skaggs, 35, of Bristol, Tenn., was convicted of statutory rape in 1995, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s statewide sex offender registry. He also has been convicted of disorderly conduct after knocking over a hospital bed and twice for assault following fights with his girlfriends.
On Tuesday, police charged Skaggs with trespassing, disorderly conduct and other crimes after arresting him at High Point. His presence at High Point along with two other men sparked a tense two-hour lockdown that has school officials wondering how much security is enough.
“What I saw [Tuesday] was something I hadn’t really thought about,” said Alan Lee, Washington County’s superintendent of public schools.
The schools already keep all but the front doors locked during classes, but Lee said Wednesday that more security might be needed.
“For the peace of mind it would give the people in our buildings, it would be worth it,” he said.
The event might have rattled parents and adults more than the students.
Jerry Testerment said his 8-year-old daughter thought little of the lockdown.
“I said, ‘how’d it go,’ and she said it was just like they [practiced] it before,” Testerment said in a Wednesday telephone interview.
But Lee said intruders without malice are his new fear.
Skaggs and two other men entered the school at 12:26 p.m. Tuesday asking to use a telephone, according to sheriff’s reports. Staff in the principal’s office ordered the men to leave, but they refused. School staff then called the sheriff’s office, and ordered a lockdown.
Sheriff’s deputies said Skaggs barricaded himself inside a closet in the principal’s office, and slashed his arms with a shard of glass.
One man, from Memphis, Tenn., ran away, but was eventually caught, questioned and released by deputies. Another man, from Bristol, Tenn., drove away in a car they had parked near the school.
Investigators found the car late Tuesday, out of gas and abandoned on a road near the school. Later that night, investigators found, questioned and released the driver.
Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman declined to identify the two men because they have not been charged. But he said the car’s empty gas tank lends credence to the trio’s story.
“None of the three individuals knew anyone at the school or had ever been to the school,” Newman said.
But Skaggs has a record of criminal behavior including the 1995 statutory rape conviction, and an incident July 31 at the Bristol Regional Medical Center, where he was scheduled for a mental evaluation.
Bristol Tennessee police were called to the hospital’s emergency room that day to investigate a fight. Officers found a very angry Skaggs, who was irritated because he had to wait for his scheduled mental evaluation.
Skaggs was upset “due to feeling he was not being treated fast enough,” an officer wrote in an arrest report filed in Bristol Tennessee General Sessions Court. “He then began yelling, cussing, beating on the door and turned the bed over. Due to observing some of his actions, Mr. Skaggs was then placed under arrest for disorderly conduct.”
Skaggs then served a 30-day jail sentence that began with a suicide watch, court records show.
On the arrest report for that incident, Skaggs is listed as being on the “violent sex offender registry.”  But a check of the registry indicates he is classified as a sex offender, not as a “violent” sex offender.
That classification difference could change how the court handles the charges Skaggs faces over his presence at the elementary school.
Virginia law includes felony trespassing charges for convicted sex offenders who are found where children are known to gather, such as a school. As of now, Skaggs is charged with misdemeanor trespassing.
Months before Skaggs lost his temper at the hospital, he was sentenced to six months in jail for throwing an object through a window of the Bristol, Va., courthouse, court and police records show.
And even earlier, in 1996, court records show, Skaggs served a 30-day jail stint for disorderly conduct, which occurred after police questioned him about his possible involvement in a fight.
Later that year, court records show, Skaggs served time on a conviction over hitting a girlfriend. He was sentenced to serve two days behind bars in addition to the time spent in jail awaiting his court hearing. The court record does not list the total time served.
Then, in 1997, he hit another girlfriend during an apparent break-up in the parking lot of the Kroger on Volunteer Parkway in Bristol, Tenn. Court records show he was sentenced to nearly a year in jail following that offense.
Following Tuesday’s incident, Skaggs was charged with possession of a schedule II controlled drug, destruction of private property, disorderly conduct, trespass and violation of his probation. He is being held without bail in the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon.
“Had the three men simply left the school … it probably wouldn’t have escalated like it did,” Newman said.
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