NEWPORT NEWS, Va. – A Virginia prosecutor said Thursday he will continue the case against a former assistant director indicted about a child neglect charge at the elementary school where a 6-year-old shot a teacher last year, and suggested that others could be charged as the investigation continues.
One day after special grand jury report describing the case against former administrator Ebony Parker was made public, Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told reporters he was “concerned” by the findings but believes the charge is warranted. He added that he has never filed a complaint against a school administrator nor heard of anything that has been done regarding this case, but that “we go where the facts take us.”
“I never thought of it as precedent-setting,” Gwynn said. “I just think of it as us doing our jobs. And so, whether or not it has any precedent, it’s not really relevant to what we do and it has no bearing on any decisions we make.”
The shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on January 6, 2023 brought national attention to school safety and stunned the community when police announced the the child’s actions seemed intentional.
Legal experts say it remains rare for charges to be brought against parents, administrators or other adults when a child commits gun violence at school. But some say the recent involuntary manslaughter trials of Parents of teenage Michigan school shooter who killed four classmates – the first parents in the US to be held criminally responsible for a mass shooting committed by their child – could set a legal precedent that would lead to similar lawsuits.
Gwynn said there is a message to be sent when accusations are made in the aftermath of school shootings and that “the safety of children, staff and administrators must be taken seriously.”
“Everything you do and say sends a message. And what message do you want to send with your conduct,” Gwynn said of school officials, adding that it should be: “‘We have to do everything we can to protect you. I know this is a dangerous situation. So we have to do everything we can to protect it, because that’s what we signed up for.'”
In Newport News, the 6-year-old student, who has not been named, used a 9 mm handgun to shoot his teacher, Abigail Zwerner, as she sat at the reading table in her first-grade classroom. She was seriously injured but survived and was able to escort her class of about 15 students to safety, police said.
On the day of the shooting, Parker, Richneck’s assistant principal at the time, was told by other staff and students on four occasions that the child could be a “potentially dangerous threat,” according to the grand jury report.
“Dr. Parker’s lack of response and initiative, given the seriousness of the information she received on January 6, 2023, is shocking,” the report says, adding that it was a “preventable situation.”
Parker, who resigned after the shooting, was charged with eight counts of child abuse — each representing the number of bullets the boy had in the gun, Gwynn said. She appeared in Newport News Circuit Court on Tuesday for a hearing with her attorney, and another hearing has been scheduled for next month before trial.
If found guilty, she could face up to five years in prison per charge.
It was unclear whether she has yet filed a lawsuit and her attorney could not immediately be reached for comment after the hearing.
The 11-member grand jury, which was empaneled in September, said it heard from 19 witnesses, reviewed several hundred school records documents and watched police body camera and other video to reach its decision.
His report provided more details about the events leading up to and during the shooting, including that after the boy shot Zwerner from less than 6 feet away, he tried to shoot again but was thwarted.
“The child continued to look at her without changing his emotional facial expression as he attempted to fire again,” the report says. “The firearm jammed due to his lack of force on the first shot, inhibiting him from shooting again at Ms. Zwerner or anyone else. The firearm had a full magazine with seven additional bullets ready to fire if not was due to the blocking of the firearm.”
Gwynn said Thursday that he was disturbed by other details and allegations in the report, including that students were traumatized after the shooting and were unable to transfer schools and how a friend of the 6-year-old boy tried to warn adults at the school about the gun and “feel guilty today because no one listened to them.”
He added that an investigation into missing documents related to the student’s behavioral file is ongoing.
The grand jury report notes the boy’s disciplinary problems, including in the days before the shooting, when he was “defiant during recess,” “constantly talking back to Zwerner,” banging his phone on the floor while reading, causing the screen to break. . , and used a bad word at her. He was suspended for a day after this incident.
Gwynn said her office is working with school leadership to determine what happened to the missing documents in its archive, and if it is discovered that someone illegally removed them, “trust me when I say, ‘They will be charged.'”
The Newport News Public Schools school board said in a statement Thursday that the district has since implemented several changes following the shooting and “will continue to do so in the future.” The district installed metal detectors in all of its schools and brought in new leaders.
“The safety of students and staff remains one of the School Board’s top priorities,” the school board said.
After the shooting, Gwynn told NBC News that it would not seek charges against the 6-year-old boy, citing his age and inability to properly understand the legal system, but said it was still evaluating whether it could hold an adult criminally responsible.
The child’s family said she has an “acute disability” and has received the “treatment she needs” under court-ordered temporary detention at a medical facility.
A year ago, Gwynn also sought out a grand jury to determine charges against the boy’s mother, Deja Taylor. She was sentenced in December to two years is in prison on a state child neglect charge and is scheduled to begin his state sentence after he finishes serving 21 months on a related federal charge.
Three months after the shooting, Zwerner also filed a $40 million lawsuit against the school district, alleging that administrators, including Parker, failed to heed warnings. The grand jury’s findings are similar to your complaint.
Zwerner resigned after filing the lawsuit.
During a news conference Thursday, lawyers for Zwerner, 26, said she has been “cooperating in every way we can” with the criminal investigation and welcomed the grand jury’s decision to bring charges against a school administrator who “ did not act.”
They said they were disturbed by how the grand jury noted that Parker “did not look away from the computer screen” when Zwerner tried to tell her he was worried about the boy’s “aggression” before the shooting happened that day. Others tried to warn Parker that the boy was believed to be armed, but said she did not intervene, according to the report.
“When someone walks into your office and tells you there is a gun on campus, looking away from your computer screen should be a given,” said attorney Kevin Biniazan. “Taking immediate action, whatever it may be, should be a given. And it is a danger that is not common, not common or expected. It is a danger that required an immediate response from the administration and the special grand jury report reveals that Did not happen.”
Diane Toscano, another attorney for Zwerner, said she discovered some new details in the grand jury report, including how the boy tried to fire the gun again but it was jammed.
“It was hard to read,” she said, “knowing he tried to shoot a second time.”
Owen Hayes reported from Newport News, Erik Ortiz from New York and Julia Jester from Washington.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
