A former Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student in her classroom in 2023 testified Thursday that she thought he had died that day.
Abby Zwerner testified in her $40 million lawsuit filed against a former assistant principal accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the student had a gun.
Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 while sitting at a reading table in her first-grade classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and cannot fully use his left hand. A bullet remains in his chest.
“I thought he died. I thought he was on his way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner testified. “But then everything went black. Then I thought I’m not going to go there. And then my next memory is that I see two coworkers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”
The shooting shocked the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how such a young child could access a gun and shoot his teacher.
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said he has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court on Wednesday that she has become a licensed cosmetologist.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker is accused of failing to act after several people raised concerns with her in the hours before the shooting that the student had brought a gun to school. Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. Previously, a judge removed the district’s superintendent and the school’s principal.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of gross child neglect. Each of the charges is punishable by up to five years in prison upon conviction.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s gun by climbing into a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mother’s purse.