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U.S.|Jury Awards $10 Million to Teacher Shot by 6-Year-Old Student
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/us/abby-zwerner-virginia-teacher-shooting-lawsuit.html
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The teacher, Abigail Zwerner, was shot in the hand and chest by a first grade student who brought his mother’s gun to class in 2023.
Nov. 6, 2025, 1:33 p.m. ET
A Virginia jury on Thursday awarded $10 million in damages to a former first-grade teacher who testified that she thought she was dying when she was shot in the hand and chest by a 6-year-old student who brought his mother’s gun to class in January 2023.
The judgment came after lawyers for the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, argued in a civil trial that Ebony Parker, who was the school’s assistant principal, was grossly negligent in her response to four separate reports from staff members that the boy might have had a gun with him that day.
Ms. Parker’s lawyers had argued the shooting was “unforeseeable,” “unthinkable” and “unprecedented,” and that Ms. Parker was being blamed only in hindsight.
Ms. Parker was indicted in a separate criminal case last year on eight felony counts of child abuse and neglect — one for each bullet in the gun the boy brought to Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., on Jan. 6, 2023. The trial in that case is set to begin Nov. 17.
Prosecutors announced in March 2023 that they would not file criminal charges against the boy, who told investigators that he had taken his mother’s loaded 9-millimeter handgun from her purse. The boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in December 2023 to two years in prison after she pleaded guilty to felony child neglect.
The boy fired one shot at Ms. Zwerner from less than six feet away, as she sat at the reading table in her first-grade classroom, the police said. The bullet pierced her hand and entered her chest, causing her lung to collapse, her lawyers said.
