Hearing begins in $40 million lawsuit filed by a teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student

A former assistant principal in A Virginia An elementary school ignored multiple warnings that a 6-year-old student had a gun hours before she shot her teacher, a lawyer for the teacher said Tuesday at the start of a hearing in the woman’s $40 million lawsuit.

Abby Zwarner, first grade teacher at Richneck Elementary School newport newsIn January 2023, she was shot in the arm and chest while she was sitting at the study table in her classroom. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and lost the full use of her left arm. A bullet hit him in the chest.

The lawsuit accuses former school administrator Ebony Parker of failing to act after four different people approached her with concerns that a student had brought a gun to school.

Zwarner’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 said.

Toscano said the shooting occurred on the student’s first day back from suspension for turning off Zwerner’s phone two days earlier. This shocked the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how such a young child could reach a gun and shoot his teacher.

“No one could have imagined that a 6-year-old first grader would bring a gun to school,” Parker’s attorney Daniel Hogan told jurors. “You’ll be able to judge for yourself whether it was foreseeable or not. That’s the crux of the matter.”

Hogan said decision making in a public school setting is “collaborative” and “collaborative.” He also warned of hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decision based on things discovered after the fact,” Hogan said. “The law requires you to vet people when they make decisions.”

Parker is the sole defendant in the lawsuit. A judge had previously fired the district’s superintendent and school principal.

Parker will face a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of gross child neglect — one “for each of the eight bullets that endangered all the students,” prosecutors said.

Experts say criminal charges against school officials following school shootings are quite rare. A conviction on each count could result in a prison sentence of up to five years.

The student’s mother was sentenced to a total of nearly four years in prison on felony child neglect and federal weapons charges.