Child Shooter Who Wounded Virginia Teacher Previously Choked Another Teacher Until ‘She Couldn’t Breathe’
Recent legal filings have revealed that the alleged child shooter who wounded Virginia teacher Abby Zwerner had previously choked another teacher to the point where “she couldn’t breathe.”
During the 2021 school year, the six-year-old student allegedly approached the teacher from behind her chair and locked both his forearms around her neck, throttling her.
A teaching assistant admitted that they needed to physically intervene in the situation to remove the student from the teacher.
“I didn’t feel safe the rest of the year because I knew if they didn’t protect me when he choked me and I couldn’t breathe, then they wouldn’t protect me, my kids or my colleagues if he did something not as harmful,” the teacher told the Associated Press on conditions of anonymity.
Following the shooting in January 2023, recent developments have revealed that administrators at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., had repeatedly turned a blind eye to the student’s troublesome and violent behavior.
The boy allegedly “slammed” Zwerner’s personal cellphone and broke it two days before the shooting, according to a legal claim notice obtained by AP. The incident triggered a one-day suspension.
The following day, the boy shot Zwerner.
Last Friday, a local news outlet obtained dozens of emails between Zwerner and school staff reporting a growing sense of unease.
“As of today, I do not feel comfortable with him returning to my classroom today,” Zwerner wrote in an email in late November 2022 to the school’s principal Briana Foster-Newton and assistant principal Dr. Ebony Parker.
The email exchange notes that the boy gave a classmate the middle finger and then chased a classmate around the room before knocking them to the ground.
A statement from the boy’s family insists that the child “suffers from an acute disability and was under a care plan at the school that included his mother or father attending school with him and accompanying him to class every day.”
The family also added that the week of the shooting “was the first week when we were not in class with him. We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives.”
While Foster-Newton was recently reassigned to another school in the district, Parker resigned following news that Richneck administrators had dismissed multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the child possessed a gun.
“On that day, over the course of a few hours, three different times — three times — school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at school and was threatening people. But the administration could not be bothered,” Diana Toscano, Zwerner’s lawyer, said during a press conference in late January.
The legal claim specifically names Parker as the administrator responsible for dismissing concerns.
Although Parker should have notified police, the assistant principal disregarded several teachers, noting that the student “had small pockets, insinuating that he could not possibly have a gun on his person,” Toscano wrote.
