NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The teacher shot by a 6-year-old student at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6 has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the Newport News School Board — asserting that administrators were grossly negligent in allowing the shooting to take place.
Abigail Zwerner, 25, of York County, contends the first grader’s past behavior should have led to better safety protections for everyone. Instead, the complaint said, Richneck’s assistant principal ignored several stark warnings that the boy had a gun on him.
The complaint said Richneck’s assistant principal, Ebony Parker, would not even look at Zwerner when she first expressed concerns about how the 6-year-old was acting that day. Even after other students told teachers the boy had a gun, Parker would not allow him to be searched.
“It was the responsibility of Defendants to supervise (the boy), control him, remove him when necessary for the safety of others, and search him for the firearm that they knew to be in his possession,” said the complaint, filed Monday morning in Newport News Circuit Court.
Failing to act on the urgent threat, the lawsuit says, shows “a reckless disregard for the safety of all persons on the premises.”
In a classroom just before 2 p.m. — as Zwerner sat at a reading table and the boy at his desk — he suddenly pulled a gun out of his front hoodie pocket, pointed at his teacher and fired a single round.
The bullet went through Zwerner’s left hand — which she held up as the boy opened fire — and then struck her in the upper chest and shoulder, where it remains today. She managed to shuttle 18 students out of the first grade classroom before seeking help at a school office.
The news that a 6-year-old student shot his teacher during class made headlines across the country and the world. Zwerner said in an interview with the Today show two weeks ago that she “will never forget” the look on her student’s face before he shot her.
The 20-page complaint — filed by Virginia Beach attorneys Diane Toscano, Kevin Biniazan and Jeffrey Breit — largely echoes the assertions made by Toscano at a press conference and in a notice of claim in January. But the complaint expands on some key points and names staffers involved.
The Newport News School Board is named as the lead defendant. Ebony Parker is also a named defendant, as is former Schools Superintendent George Parker III — no relation to the assistant principal — and former Richneck principal Briana Foster Newton.
The lawsuit provides an extensive rendition of what Zwerner’s attorneys say happened leading up to the shooting.
The 6-year-old “had a history of random violence” that the defendants were familiar with, with the boy attacking “students and teachers alike,” the complaint said.
During kindergarten at Richneck the year before, the lawsuit says, the boy “strangled and choked a teacher,” and inappropriately touched a female student who fell in a playground.
Because of those issues, the boy was moved from Richneck to the Denbigh Early Childhood Center.
But he came back to Richneck in September 2022 to start first grade. After the school year began, he was put on a “modified schedule” after “chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it” and also cursing at staff.
Under the modified schedule, one of the boy’s parents “was required to accompany him at school” during the day.
“Teachers’ concerns with (the boy’s) behavior were regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed,” the complaint maintains. In fact, the complaint asserts the boy would come back from the school office “with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy.”
On Jan. 4, two days before the shooting, the complaint says, the boy grabbed Zwerner’s phone and refused to give it back. “He then slammed the cellphone on the ground so hard that it cracked and shattered,” and then cursed at responding staffers.
He got a one-day suspension that he served Jan. 5.
On Jan. 6, his mother dropped him off at school, but didn’t stay to attend classes with him.
During lunch, at about 11:15 a.m., Zwerner went to Parker, expressing concerns that the 6-year-old was “in a violent mood,” the lawsuit said. The boy also “threatened to beat up a kindergartner during lunchtime, and angrily stared down a security officer.”
But Parker “had no response... refusing even to look up at (Zwermer) when she expressed her concerns,” the complaint asserts. That lack of response “was consistent” with Parker’s reputation, the lawsuit says.
She “was well known ... to ignore and downplay concerns expressed by teachers,” the complaint says. Students who were sent to see her after unruly behavior would often “return to the classroom bragging about candy they had received.”
“Assistant Principal Parker’s administrative style was to permit students to engage in dangerous and disruptive conduct and impose no consequence for breaking the rules, thereby placing all persons in the vicinity of the school and in the community at risk,” the complaint says.
Attempts to reach Parker — who began with the school district in 2008 and was Richneck’s assistant principal since March of 2021 — have been unsuccessful in recent months.
At 11:45 a.m. on the day of the shooting, two students told a Richneck reading specialist that the boy had a gun in his backpack, the complaint said. She confronted the boy about it, and he denied that he had a gun — but said he was mad other students were picking on a classmate.
After recess began at 12:30 p.m., Zwerner told the reading specialist and another teacher that she saw the 6-year-old taking something out of his backpack before recess and feared it might be a gun.
Zwerner then watched the boy and a classmate “repeatedly going behind a rock-climbing wall at the playground.”
The reading specialist took it upon herself to search the boy’s pack — still in the classroom — but she didn’t find a weapon.
The reading specialist then went to Parker’s office, relayed what had transpired, and said the boy might have a gun on him. But the complaint said Parker took no action, saying the boy’s pockets “were too small” to hold a gun.
When recess ended at 1 p.m., the other first grade teacher pulled aside the boy who had been with the 6-year-old at recess. That student was “upset and crying,” and at first resisted saying anything, saying the boy had threatened to harm him if he did.
But the complaint said that student then told the teacher that the 6-year-old showed him the gun during recess.
That teacher called the school office, and she told the person who picked up the phone — a Richneck music teacher — what happened. The music teacher approached Parker about the concerns, but Parker told him the boy’s backpack had already been searched, the complaint said.
When the music teacher went back to Parker’s office a second time on the first teacher’s insistence, a Richneck guidance counselor was already there, seeking permission to search the boy.
But Parker wouldn’t allow it, the complaint said.
“Assistant Principal Parker forbade (the guidance counselor) from doing so and stated that (the boy’s) mother would be arriving soon to pick him up,” the lawsuit says.
Less than an hour later, the boy pulled the gun out of his front hoodie pocket during class and opened fire. Police Chief Steve Drew has said the handgun — a Taurus 9mm — was legally purchased by the boy’s mother and that he brought it to school that day in his backpack.
If Parker had reported the matter to the police when she was first told the boy might have a gun, the shooting would have been prevented, the complaint said.
Zwerner was released from Riverside Regional Medical Center a few weeks after the shooting. But the lawsuit contends Zwerner has suffered many negative repercussions from being shot, such as pain and suffering, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.
Toscano said she expects attorneys for the school board will seek to have the lawsuit tossed on the grounds that Zwerner is limited to a worker’s compensation claim. But Toscano contends getting shot in the classroom isn’t an expected hazard of teaching first graders — so a lawsuit should be allowed to proceed.
“The risk of being shot with a firearm ... was not a rational consequence of risks associated with her employment as a teacher of first-grade students,” the complaint says.
Newport News Social Services has had custody of the 6-year-old, and he’s now being treated at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk.
As far as criminal charges, police detectives have turned the case over to Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn to make a decision. While Gwynn has said the 6-year-old is too young to charge, the prosecutor is still making a determination on whether to charge others.
