Virginia teacher Abby Zwerner repeatedly warned her assistant principal about the first-grade student who shot her in her classroom in 2023, she testified at administrator’s trial on Tuesday.
Prosecutors say that despite days of violent and aggressive behavior by the 6-year-old boy, Richneck Elementary School administrator Ebony Parker did not search the boy or intervene in any way.
Parker is charged with eight counts child neglect — one of each bullet in the boy’s gun when he brought it to school.
She is accused of ignoring multiple warning signs that the child – who is being referred to as J.T. – might have had a gun that on Jan. 6, 2023, and that he was acting alarmingly.
Zwerner recounted how three days before the child shot her, he took her cell phone and chucked it on the floor in defiance after she told him to do something.
“The student had gotten ahold of my cell phone and he had slammed it onto the ground,” Zwerner told the jury at the trial for ex-assistant principal Ebony Parker who faces eight child neglect charges for each of the bullets in boy’s handgun.
Then the day of the shooting Zwerner said J.T. “appeared to be off and appeared to be in a violent mood.”
At lunch, she said J.T. menacingly stared down the school security officer as Zwerner was speaking to the guard.
“I witnessed the student was staring her down, very focused on her and he slowly got up from his seat and ever so slowly approached, still not breaking eye contact at the security officer and that stuck out to me as well,” Zwerner testified.
Another teacher told Zwerner the child “threatened to beat up another student,” but the judge told the jury to disregard that as hearsay.
Zwerner then went to Parker and told her he seemed “off” and was “in a violent mood.”
Later at recess, Zwerner said she was struck by the fact that J.T. had both of his hands inside his jacket “the entire time.”
Once back in the classroom Zwerner saw the boy look at her and she “looked over and a gun was pointed right at me,” she told the jury.
J.T. “was holding a gun and then I was shot,” Zwerner recounted.
The bullet went through Zwerner’s left hand and chest, she said.
During Zwerner’s civil trial against Parker last year, a jury awarded her $10 million in damages after learning the toll the incident took on her, including the fact that fragments of the bullet remain in her body to this day.
Zwerner gave more detailed testimony at the prior trial about how she thought she “died” and was going “to heaven.”
At the civil trial, Parker’s lawyers argued there was plenty of blame to go around about how staffers handled the prospect of the boy possibly having a gun that day and that she was being made a scapegoat.
On cross examination by Parker’s defense lawyer, Zwerner admitted she suspected J.T. might have had a gun after a teacher warned her.
When asked if she could have removed the boy from the other students, Zwerner responded: “In hindsight, yes I could have.”
Zwerner said she “trusted my colleagues” to act after she and others made reports to Parker.
“My understanding was it was being brought up to administration,” Zwerner said when the prosecutor asked follow-up questions.
Parker has pleaded not guilty.
The student’s mother, Deja Taylor, is serving just under four years behind bars for child neglect and weapons charges after her son took a 9mm handgun out of her purse.
The boy doesn’t face criminal or civil liability.
