A first-grade teacher who was shot by her six-year-old student in 2023 has told a court she thought she had actually died that day and was on her way to heaven after being severely wounded.
Abby Zwerner is suing the school’s former assistant principal, Ebony Parker, for $40m after she was shot in the hand and chest as she sat at the reading table in her classroom at Richneck elementary school in Newport News, Virginia, on 6 January 2023.
The lawsuit accuses Parker of ignoring multiple warnings that the boy had brought a gun to school hours before the shooting, which left Zwerner requiring six surgeries. Zwerner no longer has the full use of her left hand and a bullet, which narrowly missed her heart, remains in her chest.
She recounted in court on Thursday the moment she was shot, as she took the stand to testify in the civil trial.
She was asked by her attorney, Diane Toscano, what the last thing she remembered was after being shot. Zwerner replied: “I thought I was dying. I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven 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 also detailed what she saw before the shooting, telling the court: “The moment went by very fast … The look on the student’s face is the large memory that I have.”
Zwerner paused when she was asked how she was still feeling physically and mentally. She went on to explain that she is unable to open bags of potato chips and water bottles, adding: “Overall, I would say I do struggle with things, doing things.”
The shooting occurred on the first day the student returned to school after a suspension for slamming Zwerner’s phone two days earlier, the court heard.
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court that she has become a licensed cosmetologist but that it had been “really hard” to adjust. “I had a lot of pain, I had a lot of help, but I did it,” Zwerner told the court.
She added that she has so far been unable to get a job as a cosmetologist because her hand was still healing from surgery that was performed in April. She said she has also noticed pain in her right hand and wrist, which were not injured in the shooting, from overuse to compensate for her injured left hand.
The shooting sent shock waves through the country, with many wondering how a child so young could access a gun and shoot his teacher.
Parker is accused of allegedly failing to act after several people voiced concerns to her in the hours before the shooting that the student had taken a gun to school.
Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, told jurors on Tuesday that decision-making in a public school setting is “cooperative” and “collaborative”, and Parker could not have known what would happen.
Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the case against the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect. That is one for “each of the eight bullets [fired] that endangered all the students” in Zwerner’s classroom, prosecutors said. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison upon a conviction.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing on to a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was stowed in his mom’s purse.
