In brief
In a testimony that shook the courtroom, Abby Zwerner recounted the horrifying moment she was shot by a 6-year-old student in her Newport News classroom, believing at one point that she was dying. Zwerner's $40 million lawsuit against a former assistant principal touches on serious issues of negligence and gun access for children. As Zwerner adapts to life after the incident, the legal ramifications for school officials and the student’s family continue to unfold.
A former Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student in her classroom in 2023 testified Thursday that she thought she had died that day.
Abby Zwerner testified in her $40 million lawsuit filed against a former assistant principal who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the student had a gun.
Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet remains in her chest.
“I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner testified. “But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”
The shooting sent shockwaves through the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how a child so young could access a gun and shoot his teacher.
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court Wednesday that she has become a licensed cosmetologist.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker is accused of failing to act after several people voiced concerns to her in the hours before the shooting that the student had taken a gun to school. Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison upon a conviction.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse.
