Virginia, US school shooting of ‘hero’ teacher by 6-year-old ‘red flag for country’, mayor says

Abby Zwerner of Williamsburg, Virginia, who was shot by a 6-year-old at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on Friday (Saturday NZ time). Photo / Facebook

A Virginia, US, teacher who was critically injured when she was was shot by a 6-year-old student in Newport News is showing signs of improvement as authorities struggle to understand how a child so young could be involved in a school shooting, the city’s mayor says.

Newport News mayor Phillip Jones said the condition of the teacher, a woman in her 30s, is “trending in a positive direction” as she remains hospitalised.

The boy shot and wounded the teacher in a first-grade classroom on Friday (Saturday NZ time) at Richneck Elementary School, according to authorities.

Police Chief Steve Drew said the shooting was not accidental and was part of an altercation but didn’t elaborate further. No students were injured.

Jones declined to release additional details about what led to the altercation, citing the ongoing police investigation.

He also would not comment on how the boy got access to the gun or who owns the weapon.

“This is a red flag for the country,” Jones said.

“I do think that after this event, there is going to be a nationwide discussion on how these sorts of things can be prevented.”

Other media outlets the New York Post and the Mail Online, identified the teacher as Abby Zwerner, 25, of Williamsburg.

They reported the teacher had been deliberately shot in the chest.

The publications said a parent, Sebastian Gonzalez-Hernandez, confirmed Zwerner’s identity and called her a hero for “screaming at her kids to run away” after the student fired.

“Even after she’d been shot she was thinking about the safety of her children,” the publications reported Gonzalez-Hernandez saying.

“She is a great teacher who works hard. My son loves her very much, and we’re all very sad about what happened,” the father said. “We’re all thinking about her and hoping she gets better soon.

Meanwhile, experts who study gun violence said the shooting represents an extremely rare occurrence of a young child bringing a gun into school and wounding a teacher.

“It’s very rare and it’s not something the legal system is really designed or positioned to deal with,” said researcher David Riedman, founder of a database that tracks US school shootings dating back to 1970.

He said he’s only aware of three other shootings caused by 6-year-old students in the time period he’s studied. Those include the fatal shooting of a fellow student in 2000 in Michigan and shootings that injured other students in 2011 in Texas and 2021 in Mississippi.

Students and police gather outside Richneck Elementary School after the shooting of a teacher on Friday in Newport News, Virginia, by a young student. Photo / via AP

Riedman said he only knows of one other instance of a student younger than that causing gunfire at a school, in which a 5-year-old student brought a gun to a Tennessee school in 2013 and accidentally discharged it. No one was injured in that case.

Daniel W Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies gun violence, agreed that a 6-year-old shooting a teacher at school is extremely unusual. But he said his research shows that instances of young children accessing loaded guns and shooting themselves or others unintentionally in homes or other settings are rising.

“A 6-year-old gaining access to a loaded gun and shooting him/herself or someone else, sadly, is not so rare,” he said in an email.

In the Newport News case, Police Chief Steve Drew said yesterday the shooting didn’t appear to be an accident and that it was isolated to the single victim. He said the student and teacher had known each other in a classroom setting.

“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew told reporters.

He said the boy had a handgun in the classroom, and investigators were trying to figure out where he obtained it.

Parents and students were reunited at a gymnasium, Newport News Public Schools said via Facebook.

The police chief declined to discuss what contact investigators have had with the boy’s parents.

“We have been in contact with our commonwealth’s attorney [local prosecutor] and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man,” Drew said.

Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s aircraft carriers and other US Navy vessels.

Richneck has about 550 students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website. School officials have already said that there will be no classes at the school on Monday.

“Today our students got a lesson in gun violence,” said George Parker III, Newport News schools superintendent, “and what guns can do to disrupt, not only an educational environment, but also a family, a community”.

Virginia law does not allow 6-year-olds to be tried as adults.

In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if found guilty.

A juvenile judge would have authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and place a child under the purview of the Department of Social Services. - AP