An elementary school teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student has filed a $40 million lawsuit, accusing administrators at her Virginia school of repeatedly ignoring warnings that the student was armed with a gun and “had a history of random violence.”
Abigail Zwerner filed a lawsuit against Richneck Elementary School’s former principal, former assistant principal, the Newport News School Board and the former superintendent on Monday, accusing them of gross negligence and failure to report the weapon to authorities on Jan. 6.
“She has endured four surgeries and still has a bullet lodged inside her,” said Zwerner’s attorney Diane Toscano. “In addition to holding the school division accountable for its failures, this lawsuit is a means to deliver justice for Abby in this tragic but entirely preventable situation.”
The shooting occurred only hours after staff and teachers raised concerns to the assistant principal, Ebony Parker, about the boy having a gun, the lawsuit states.
Parker later resigned, the school board’s superintendent was fired, and the school principal was reassigned.
A representative for Newport News Public Schools told HuffPost on Monday that the district had not yet received the lawsuit and would decline to comment until it could review the suit with legal counsel.
“Our thoughts and prayers remain with Abby Zwerner and her ongoing recovery,” the district’s statement read. “The School Board and the school division’s leadership team will continue to do whatever it takes to ensure a safe and secure teaching and learning environment across all our schools.”
According to Zwerner’s lawsuit, the student’s parents were required to accompany him during the school day “because of his violent tendencies,” but on the day of the shooting, they did not. The school had instituted this requirement after the child was removed from school for allegedly strangling and choking a teacher in kindergarten. He also allegedly touched a female classmate inappropriately after pulling her dress up when she fell down on the playground.
Teachers regularly expressed concerns about the student to the school’s administration, Zwerner’s lawsuit states, but the child’s parents said they did not agree with placing him in special education classrooms where there were children with behavioral issues.
Two days before the shooting, the school suspended the student for a day after he allegedly smashed Zwerner’s phone on the ground, causing it to crack and shatter. When he returned to the school on Jan. 6, he did so in a “violent mood,” the suit claims.
According to the lawsuit, the child also threatened to beat up a kindergartener during lunch and “angrily stared down a security officer” in the lunchroom, which Zwerner reported to the assistant principal. Then, just before noon, two students informed a reading specialist that the child had a gun in his backpack.
The staffer confronted the boy about the gun, the lawsuit states, but he denied having one and refused to show her his backpack. Later, the staff member searched the child’s backpack while he was at recess, but she did not find a weapon.
The reading specialist then went to the assistant principal and told her that the child had allegedly told classmates that he had a gun and that Zwerner had seen the boy remove an object from his backpack before recess. Parker dismissed this concern, according to the lawsuit, saying the child’s pockets were too small to hold a handgun.
Another child was later seen crying and told a teacher that the student had shown him a gun and threatened to hurt him if he told anyone. The suit says the teacher then contacted the front office, which relayed this information to Parker, who again dismissed the concern, reasoning that the child’s backpack had already been searched.
Upon hearing about a possible gun, a guidance counselor and administrator at the school asked Parker if he could search the child for a firearm, but Parker said no, stating that the child’s mother was on her way to pick him up, according to the lawsuit.
Around 2 p.m., the boy pulled the gun out of his pocket and shot Zwerner as she sat in her classroom, authorities said.
The child’s parents later publicly apologized to Zwerner in a statement. They said that they are responsible gun owners and that the firearm their son brought to school had been secured, though they didn’t explain how the child got access to it.
Local prosecutors said the child will not be criminally charged in the shooting because of his age, though Newport News police Chief Steve Drew told CNN that charging the parents “is certainly a possibility.”