A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school is on trial after prosecutors said she ignored multiple warnings from teachers and students that a 6-year-old boy was carrying a handgun before he shot his first-grade teacher.
Prosecutors told jurors this week that the ex-administrator, identified as Ebony Parker, was repeatedly alerted on the day of the January 2023 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News that the child might have a gun.
Multiple staff members and students reported that the boy had threatened classmates and said he had a firearm with him, but officials said Parker did not remove the child from class or contact police before the shooting occurred, according to CNN.
According to a 31-page grand jury report described in court records, at least three separate warnings reached Parker in the hours before the incident, including from a teacher who believed the boy had taken something from his backpack and from a staff member who relayed that another child claimed to have seen the weapon.
Despite these alerts, the report stated that the boy was not thoroughly searched, no lockdown procedures were initiated, and the school's resource officer was not called to the classroom.
The incident culminated when the 6-year-old student shot first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner in her classroom, striking her in the hand and chest and seriously injuring her, authorities said, the Associated Press reported.
Zwerner later filed a civil lawsuit, in which a jury awarded her $10 million, alleging that Parker and other school officials showed reckless disregard for her safety by dismissing the warnings about the child and his history of aggressive behavior toward staff and students.
Parker now faces eight counts of felony child neglect, with prosecutors saying each count corresponds to one of the eight rounds in the handgun the boy brought into Zwerner's classroom.
Each charge is a Class 6 felony that carries a potential sentence of up to five years in prison, meaning Parker could face as many as 40 years if convicted on all counts, according to court documents and prosecutors' statements, as per Fox News.
