Terrifying moment teacher was SHOT by six-year-old boy in her Virginia classroom
By Natasha Anderson
Daily Mail
Oct 30, 2025
Abby Zwerner was hospitalized for nearly two weeks after the shooting, required six surgeries and still today does not have full use of her left hand. A bullet also remains in her chest
Paramedics rushed to save a Virginia elementary teacher's life after she was shot in her classroom by a six-year-old student, newly released body camera footage shows.
Abby Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School.
Distressing police body camera footage presented to the jury Wednesday showed Zwerner lying on the floor as first responders applied gauze and pressure to the bloody gunshot wound on her upper chest, near her left shoulder.
The first-grade teacher, whose face was pale and displayed a pained expression, was carried out of the building on a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Zwerner was hospitalized for nearly two weeks, required six surgeries and still today does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet also remains in her chest.
She believed she had died in the incident, Zwerner testified at the trial Thursday.
'I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,' she told the jury. 'But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn't going there.
'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 has filed a $40 million lawsuit against a former assistant principal who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the young boy had a gun.
Distressing police body camera footage presented to the jury Wednesday showed how paramedics rushed to render aid to teacher Abby Zwerner after she was shot in January 2023
Several of Zwerner's doctors took the stand Wednesday, detailing the scope of her injuries to the court.
A physician testified that Zwerner can no longer make a tight fist with her left hand, which has less than half its normal grip strength.
One noted that her fingers were nearly severed during the incident, WAVY reported. Another alleged the bullet barely missed her heart.
'[This] was much more similar to a war injury than anything I’d normally see,' one doctor added.
The jury was shown images of the gun that the six-year-old used in the horrific attack and the very classroom where the shooting occurred.
The court also heard from how, on the day of the shooting, former assistant principal Ebony Parker was allegedly notified of a potential threat posed by the boy.
Parker is accused of failing to act after several people went to her with concerns in the hours before the shooting that the student had a gun in his backpack.
Zwerner's attorney, Diane Toscano, said in opening statements on Wednesday that Parker made 'bad decisions and choices that day.'
Zwerner (pictured in court Tuesday) has filed a $40 million lawsuit against a former assistant principal who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the young boy had a gun
The jury was shown images of the gun that the six-year-old used in the horrific attack
This is the classroom where Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table
The gun is seen laying on the classroom floor after the horrific shooting
Parker had the authority but failed to search the student, remove him from the classroom and call law enforcement, Toscano added.
The shooting occurred on the first day after the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner's phone two days earlier, the defense said.
'No one could have imagined that a 6-year old, first-grade student would bring a firearm into a school,' Parker's attorney, Daniel Hogan, told jurors.
'You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable. That's the heart of this case.'
Hogan said that decision-making in a public school setting is 'cooperative' and 'collaborative.' He also warned of hindsight bias and 'Monday morning quarterbacking.'
'The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person's decisions based on stuff that came up after the fact,' Hogan said. 'The law requires you to examine people's decisions at the time they make them.'
Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district's superintendent and the school principal as defendants.
Former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker (pictured in court Tuesday) is accused of failing to act after several people went to her with concerns in the hours before the shooting that the student had a gun in his backpack
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court Wednesday that she has become a licensed cosmetologist
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect. 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 onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom's purse.
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court Wednesday that she has become a licensed cosmetologist.
No comments:
Post a Comment