A former elementary school teacher in Virginia has been awarded $10 million by a jury after she was shot in the chest in 2023 by a six-year-old student – in a civil case that could set precedent of holding officials responsible in the wake of a school shooting.
Abby Zwerner, who once taught at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, sued Ebony Parker, the assistant principal, for gross negligence, accusing the school administrator of disregarding multiple warnings that the child possessed a firearm.
Zwerner was injured when she was shot while sitting at a reading table in her first-grade classroom. The bullet narrowly missed her heart and to this day, remains in her chest.
The former teacher spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. Her legal action had sought $40 million in compensatory damages from Parker, who was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.
The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.
Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, said in opening statements that Parker made “bad decisions and choices that day.” Parker had the authority but failed to search the student, remove him from the classroom and call law enforcement, Toscano added.
The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.
“Who would think a 6-year-old would bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, told the jury. “It’s Dr. Parker’s job to believe that that is possible. It’s her job to investigate it and get to the very bottom of it.”
Parker did not testify in the lawsuit. Her attorney had warned jurors about hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking” in the shooting.
“No one could have imagined that a 6-year old, first-grade student would bring a firearm into a school,” Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, told jurors during opening statements. Hogan added that decision making in a public school setting is “cooperative” and “collaborative.”
“The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decisions based on stuff that came up after the fact. The law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”
The shooting occurred on the first day after the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner’s phone two days earlier.
Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun prior to class recess from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.
During her trial, Zwerner testified she believed that she had died that day.
“I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner said. “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.”
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. She has since become a licensed cosmetologist.
The student’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges.
According to CBS News, an attorney for the family previously said the firearm used in the shooting was locked away on a high closet shelf, but the boy said he took it from his mother’s purse on her dresser.
Source: independent.co.uk