The Madeleine Thackeray School for Girls
Potomac, Maryland
The Madeleine Thackeray School for Girls catered to wealthy and prominent Washingtonians and was known internationally as a gateway into the nation’s most exclusive Ivy League universities for accomplished young women. Its campus was located north of D.C. in a curve of the Potomac River dotted with multimillion-dollar estates. The scenic area was ranked as the fourth most affluent community in the nation.
Eleven-year-old Cassy Adeogo was a day student who’d been offered a scholarship because she was the sort of African American the administration welcomed. Representative Rudy Adeogo’s daughter was a focused high academic achiever, mature beyond her years, and a perfect fit for the school’s diversity recruitment program.
Cassy had just changed from her school uniform into her brown horse riding breeches, tall black boots, and long-sleeved top in preparation for a ten o’clock riding lesson in the school’s arena when a commercial van turned into the campus. Giant black ants and red termites were painted on the van’s side panels along with the redundant motto: WE KILL BUGS REALLY DEAD. The FBI would later confirm that the van had been stolen from the parking lot of a nearby extermination business. The van parked near the double doors that led inside the riding arena and four men wearing black ski masks darted from it into the cavernous dirt-floored showground.
“Stop riding!” the leader of the intruders yelled, waving a pistol through the air.
The equitation class teacher calmly eyeballed the gunmen as the two student assistants near him and their half dozen charges brought their mounts to a standstill. “Ladies,” the instructor said, “remain where you are while I ask why these men are interrupting us.”
Because of widespread school shootings, the administration had held emergency drills but those practice runs had focused on steps that students in classrooms were supposed to take. No one had thought through how students on horseback should react if armed attackers burst into the arena. The instructor—an Englishman in his mid-sixties—nudged his steed toward the four men.
“Sir, what is your business here?” he asked.
The lead terrorist fired his handgun into the instructor’s face. Students screamed as their instructor toppled from his horse, landing with a dull thump on the ground. His well-trained horse didn’t flinch.
Pointing to the three black girls in the riding class, the gunman said, “You three take off your helmets. We only want Cassy Adeogo.” As the girls slipped off their helmets, he quickly compared their faces to a snapshot of the Adeogo family that had been published in a Minnesota newspaper after Rudy Adeogo had been elected to Congress.
“You,” he hollered, as soon as he recognized Cassy. “Get down.” Two of the other intruders hurried toward her. For a second, Cassy thought about trying to flee on her horse, but decided that would be pointless since the arena openings used by the animals were closed. She slipped off her saddle.
The two men approached her, grabbed her thin arms, and led the eleven-year-old across the arena and outside through the double doors. They shoved her into the back of their panel van, and while one of them was busy binding Cassy’s wrists and ankles with duct tape, his comrade started to return to the arena. At the same moment he reached its entrance, the school’s director of security came speeding into the parking lot. He was coming to investigate reports of what had sounded like a gunshot.
“Captain Charlie,” as the girls knew him, had spent twenty-five years working as a Washington, D.C., police officer before retiring and taking the head security job at the girls’ school. Most days, he kept busy putting warnings (but never tickets) on cars parked illegally or ferreting out the occasional bag of marijuana that found its way onto campus. The school didn’t allow him to carry a handgun because administrators felt it sent students and parents the wrong message—that the campus wasn’t safe. But Captain Charlie kept a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver in the glove box of his campus vehicle, and when he spotted a gunman about to enter the riding arena, he grabbed it, leaped from his car, and began shooting.
His first round missed, but the next two shots struck their mark and the terrorist buckled and collapsed with his back resting against the arena’s double metal doors. The former police officer moved toward the arena slowly with his pistol still pointed in front of him. When he reached the entrance, he bent down and felt the fallen attacker’s neck for a pulse to make certain he was dead. Next, he peeked through the upper half of the doors, which had solid bottoms but were glass from the waist up. He could see two additional gunmen inside guarding eight students who had been forced to dismount and were standing in a line in front of their horses.
Captain Charlie dialed 911 on his cell phone and was about to explain what was happening when a bullet pierced his spinal cord. He’d been shot by the terrorist who had been inside the van duct-taping Cassy’s wrists and ankles. He’d slipped unnoticed from the van when he’d heard gunfire.
Captain Charlie was still breathing but was now lying paralyzed next to the terrorist whom he had fatally shot moments earlier. Rushing forward from the van, his attacker fired two more rounds into the security director, killing him.
The gunman shoved both bodies out of the way, threw open the doors, and yelled a warning to his buddies. They reacted quickly. Turning, they began firing their weapons at the eight girls, who seemed immobilized by fear. All but one was cut down immediately. The girl who ran only made it ten feet from the others before she was murdered. The sound of the repeated gunfire spooked the horses. They ran in circles around their fallen riders.
Having gotten what they had come for, the three terrorists carried their dead jihadist to the van where they dumped his corpse next to a traumatized Cassy in the rear of the vehicle.
As the men fled from the school grounds, one of them checked the time. Their attack, the murders, and the abduction of the congressman’s daughter had taken a total of seventeen minutes.