Trial for Teacher Shot by 6-Year-Old Student Begins

Safety at Work

Newport News, VA (WorkersCompensation.com) – A teacher suing her school district for damages after she was shot by a 6-year-old student is having her days in court.

Abby Zwerner, the former Newport News, Va., teacher shot by her student, testified she wasn’t sure if the student had a real gun or a fake one on that day in January 2023 until he pulled it out and shot her with it.

“I thought I had died,” she said.

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Zwerner is suing for $40 million. She alleges that the Richneck Elementary School assistant principal, Ebony Parker, failed to take action against the student even after being told multiple times the student had a firearm the day of the incident. Zwerner also alleges Parker refused to let anyone search him prior to the shooting despite being asked to do so multiple times.

Zwerner said she was told her student, identified at JT, had a gun earlier in the day. Reading specialist Amy Kovac testified earlier that two students had told her JT had a gun in his backpack and she reported that to Parker. Zwerner said she knew Kovac was going to report the gun.

"I knew that she was going to tell Dr. Parker," Zwerner said of Kovac, when asked by her attorney why she didn't tell Parker herself about a reported gun in the student's backpack.

Kovac also previously testified that Zwerner texted her that she saw JT take something out of his backpack and put it in his pocket before recess. Zwerner said in court last week that she knew Kovac would relay that information to Parker as well.

Kovac testified that she told Parker about Zwerner’s concerns, as well as the fact that she (Kovac) had searched JT’s backpack during recess but did not find a gun. She told Parker she suspected JT had it on him because of Zwerner’s texts.

Zwerner was asked by the defense if she thought the gun JT was carrying was real, and she said she considered it.

"The whole day, I was contemplating it could be real, but it also could not,” she said. "When you hear the word, he told students he brought a gun with him to school, there is that possibility.”

But Zwerner said she realized the gun was real when he shot her. Officials said the bullet went through her left hand, which she had lifted to protect herself, and then into her chest. She was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Doctors testified that the bullet is still lodged in her chest.

"I thought I had died," she recalled on the stand. "I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven. But then it all got black and so I then thought I wasn't going there. 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.”

Zwerner said in her complaint that Parker acted with gross negligence and “reckless disregard” for Zwerner’s safety.

After the 2023 shooting, Zwerner’s attorney said in a letter to the school district that the shooter had a history of concerning behavior, and that Parker was aware of that history. The attorney said JT had allegedly been removed from the school a year before because he “choked his teacher until she couldn’t breathe” and then was put on a modified schedule in the fall of 2022 because of his cursing at the staff and teachers. The attorney also said JT allegedly took off his belt on the playground one day and “chased kids trying to whip them.”

The shooter had also been suspended the day before the shooting because he had “slammed Ms. Zwerner’s phone breaking it” and had cursed at the guidance counselors.

As part of the lawsuit, Zwerner said not only had she told Parker that the student was in a “violent mood” and had already threatened to beat up a kindergartner on the day of the shooting, but that Parker was warned four other times by others about the gun.

Last week, however, the defense argued in a motion to strike that Zwerner had failed to establish that Parker had an assumption of duty to protect Zwerner from harm that she had breached through gross negligence.

Newport News Circuit Court Judge Matthew Hoffman responded that those are issues for the jury to decide and denied the motion.

"At this time, the court finds that there is sufficient and credible evidence that the defendant assumed the duty of care, breached that care in a grossly negligent manner, and that breach was the proximate cause of the plaintiff's harm," Newport News Circuit Court Judge Matthew Hoffman said. "That will be all for the jury to decide."

Both Zwerner and Parker resigned from the school after the incident. Parker has also been charged with eight counts of felony child abuse with disregard for life in connection with the shooting – one count for each bullet in the gun, according to the Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney's Office. That trial is expected to begin this month.

The student’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to two years in state prison for child neglect because the child brought the gun from home. She is currently serving that sentence after having served 21 months in prison on related federal firearm and drug charges.

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