Virginia principal ‘ignored’ warnings boy, 6, had gun before shooting teacher

The former administrator at a Virginia school where a 6-year-old student shot his first grade teacher ignored multiple warnings from staff that the child had a weapon, the victim’s lawyer told jurors Tuesday as her $40 million civil trial began.

Abigail Zwerner was left with a bullet lodged in her body after she was blasted by the tot in 2023 at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News — where former assistant principal Ebony Parker allegedly brushed off claims by Zwerner and three others that the boy was possibly carrying a weapon.

“Who would think a 6-year-old is going to bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” Zwerner’s lawyer Diane Toscano said in her opening statements Tuesday, according to Fox News. “Dr. Parker’s job is to believe that is possible.”

“She made bad decisions that day,” Toscano said of the Jan. 6, 2023, shooting.

“1:58 p.m., BANG!” Toscano dramatically told the jury. “A bullet went through Abby’s hand, then through her chest.”

Doctors were forced to leave the bullet inside Zwerner’s body because of a greater risk to her health if they removed it, Toscano explained.

But Parker’s lawyer, Daniel Hogan, argued in his own opening remarks that Parker couldn’t have predicted what happened. Parker, who faces separate criminal charges in the shocking case, resigned after the debacle. She is also the only remaining defendant in Zwerner’s lawsuit.

“No one could have imagined that a 6-year-old first-grade student would bring a firearm into a school,” Hogan said to the jury. “You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable. That’s the heart of this case.”

Hogan claimed it was easy to play the blame game after the fact once all the evidence had come out, but “the law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”

The defense attorney also maintained that in school settings decisions are “cooperative” and “collaborative” — in an apparent attempt to diffuse blame.

Multiple staffers testified about warning Parker about the child possibly having a weapon.

Dr. Nina Farrish, the director of human resources for the Newport News school district, testified that a few days after the shooting, Parker confessed that she was told about the student carrying a gun in his backpack — just 90 minutes before he fired it.

Reading specialist Amy Kovac told jurors she heard Zwerner, 25, telling Parker inside her office that the boy threatened another student and was aggressive with a security officer at lunch. But Parker couldn’t be bothered to even look up at the young teacher during the concerning conversation, Kovac told the jury.

Parker told Kovac to tell Zwerner that if she was worried she could call the child’s mother to have him picked up, Kovac recalled.

Kovac then approached the child asking, “Can I have the bag?”

But he answered, “No, no one is getting that bag,” Kovac recounted.

So Kovac went back to Parker and told the vice principal about her own exchange with the child. Parker once again brushed it under the rug, Kovac testified.

“Well, he has little pockets,” Kovac recalled, Parker saying.

Kovac tried to get Parker to take the claim seriously, adding that the boy could have hid the gun in his jacket pocket.

Just minutes later, Kovac recalled hearing a gunshot and then running straight to Zwerner’s classroom, she testified.

“I walked straight to him,” Kovac recalled, describing the boy “with his legs kind of spread open, arms crossed and cocked.”

Kovac said she held the boy by the wrists and used Zwerner’s cell phone to call 911.

“A teacher’s been shot,” Kovac recounted saying on the phone. “I have the shooter. Send help.”

Jennifer West, another first-grade teacher, reported to school administration and the school counselor that one of her students saw the boy with the gun and a bullet after recess. That prompted counselor Rolonzo Rawles to ask Parker if he could search the boy, but the vice principal told him they could search the child when his mom arrived, which would be soon, Rawles told jurors.

“I wasn’t going to check him without permission,” Rawles said.

Zwerner’s lawyer claims that Parker did have the authority to search the boy.

On Wednesday, Zwerner’s sister, Hannah Zwerner, told jurors about how her teacher sibling has been more reclusive ever since the shooting.

“She’s just not the person that she was. I feel like she’s kind of lost her sense of direction in a way. She doesn’t want to go out anymore. I don’t talk to her as much as we used to,” Hannah testified.

“She doesn’t want to talk about things. She doesn’t share them with us,” the sister explained, according to a report by WTKR News 3.

Parker is slated to go on trial next month in a criminal case charging her with child neglect.

The boy’s mom, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in 2023 to two years in prison for child neglect after the boy took the 9mm handgun out of her purse.