Teacher shot to death by 6-year-old student at school testifies she thought she was dead
A former Virginia teacher who was shot and killed by a 6-year-old student in her classroom in 2023 testified Thursday that she thought she was dead that day.
Abby Zwerner is testifying in a $40 million lawsuit against a former assistant principal accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the student had a gun.
In January 2023, Zwirner was shot in the hand and chest while sitting at a reading table in his first-grade classroom at Ridgeneck Elementary School in Newport News. Zwirner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and lost full use of his left hand. A bullet nearly hit her heart and lodged in her chest.
“I thought I was dead. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or I was in heaven,” Zwirner testified. “But then everything went black. So, I thought I wasn’t going to go there. And then my next memory is I saw two colleagues around me and I realized I was injured and they were putting pressure on where I was injured.”
The shooting shocked the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how a child so young could have picked up a gun and shot his teacher.
Zwirner no longer works for the school district and said she does not plan to teach again. It was revealed in court on Wednesday that she had become a licensed beautician.
Zwierner was in the booth answering questions for more than an hour.
On Wednesday, a doctor testified that Zwirner was unable to make a fist with her left hand and that her left hand had less than half its normal grip strength.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker is accused of failing to take action after several people expressed concerns to her that the student had a gun in his backpack in the hours before the shooting. Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the charges against the superintendent and the school principal.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight felony counts of child neglect. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 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 climbed the drawer to the top of the dresser and obtained his mother’s handgun, which was in his mother’s purse.
