Former Virginia first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner took the stand Monday in the ongoing criminal trial of former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker, delivering a harrowing firsthand account of how she was shot by a 6-year-old student.
Zwerner described the student’s escalating violent behavior and the repeated warnings she gave school administrators, which she says were ignored before the boy pulled a 9mm handgun from his jacket and shot her in the hand and chest in her classroom in 2023.
Zwerner, who has undergone multiple surgeries and still has bullet fragments in her body, described a student she referred to only as “J.T.” who displayed clear signs of aggression in the days leading up to the shooting at the Newport News school.
Three days before the incident, Zwerner testified that the boy became defiant and slammed her cellphone onto the ground after she instructed him to do something.
On the morning of the shooting itself, she immediately noticed something was wrong.
“The student appeared to be off and appeared to be in a violent mood,” the former teacher told the jury, according to a report from the New York Post.
Zwerner said she went directly to assistant principal Ebony Parker to voice her concerns.
“I told her that he seemed off and that he was in a violent mood,” Zwerner recounted.
During lunch that day, Zwerner witnessed the boy menacingly staring down a school security officer.
“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,” she testified.
At recess, the boy kept both of his hands inside his jacket the entire time.
When the class returned to the room, Zwerner looked over and saw the unthinkable: “I looked over, and a gun was pointed right at me.”
The 6-year-old was holding the loaded handgun and fired, shooting her through the left hand and into her chest.
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Zwerner has previously said she thought she was dying.
“I thought I had died. I thought I was on my way to heaven or in heaven, but then it all got black,” she testified in an earlier civil trial.
Parker is currently on trial, facing eight felony counts of child neglect, one count for each bullet loaded in the handgun the first grader brought to school.
Prosecutors allege Parker ignored multiple warnings from staff that the boy had a gun in his backpack and failed to search him or take any meaningful action to protect the 15 students and teacher in the classroom.
In November, a civil jury found Parker grossly negligent and awarded Zwerner $10 million in damages against her personally.
Parker’s attorneys have argued she was being made a scapegoat and that other staff members also failed to act decisively. She has pleaded not guilty.
The boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty to child neglect and allowing her son access to her handgun.
The 6-year-old himself faces no criminal charges due to his age.
The post Virginia Teacher Abby Zwerner Testifies She Warned Assistant Principal Multiple Times Before 6-Year-Old Shot Her in Classroom: ‘He Was in a Violent Mood’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.