Six-year-old arrested after shooting teacher in classroom ‘altercation’
A six-year-old boy is in police custody after reportedly shooting a teacher in the stomach and leaving her with life threatening injuries following a classroom altercation.
“This was not an accidental shooting,” said Steve Drew, Police Chief at Newport News, a city in Virginia.
The teacher, 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner, was in a stable condition, following the incident at Richneck Elementary School on Friday.
It was unclear how the child obtained the gun.
“It is still a very fluid and active investigation, we are working around the clock,” a police spokesman told the Telegraph.
Despite the large number of school shootings across the US, there have been only 16 cases since 1970 in which the perpetrator was under 10.
Under Virginia law, a six-year-old child cannot be charged as an adult despite the gravity of the offence.
Even if charged in a juvenile court, the minimum age for juvenile custody is 11.
“The juvenile justice system is not really equipped to deal with really young kids who commit criminal offences and is probably the wrong place to deal with a situation like this,” said Andrew Block, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, speaking to the New York Times.
This was the third shooting at a school in the Newport News school system in 17 months.
In September 2021 two 17-year-olds were injured after a 16-year-old unleashed a volley of bullets during a school lunch break.
Then, only three months later, 17-year-old Justice Dunham, was shot dead by Demari Batten, 18, in the parking lot of Menchville High School.
‘She is an amazing teacher’
Details of the Richneck school incident, which erupted at 2pm, are sketchy.
Even after being shot, according to local reports, Ms Zwerner screamed at children to get to safety.
One parent, Sebastian Gonzalez-Hernandez, said his child was in the classroom at the time.
“My son didn't see what happened, he heard the gunshot go off, and turned around to see Miss Zwerner on the floor. She is an amazing teacher, so dedicated," he told Mail Online.
A grandmother of another pupil claimed the child shooter brought bullets to the school in the previous week and said he would bring a gun.
The school, she claimed, had been told of the incident, but took no action.
There was palpable shock in Newport News, a city of 180,000 which houses a major shipyard and naval base.
“It’s scary,” Mr Gonzalez-Hernandez added. “I’m just here trying to keep my son occupied so he’s not thinking about everything,”
“We’re a quiet neighbourhood,” Daniel Smith, a local resident, told the New York Times.
Calls for tighter gun laws
“Nobody bothers anybody, and they look out for each other.”
The shooting renewed calls for tighter gun laws restricting children’s access to weapons.
In Virginia it is illegal for anyone to recklessly leave a loaded gun “in a manner that it would endanger the life or limb of any child under the age of 14”.
But campaigners described the state’s legislation as inadequate.
“Virginia’s law is on the weaker end of the spectrum of these types of laws,” said Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at Giffords Law Centre to Prevent Gun Violence.
Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor, disagreed saying the state’s laws were among the toughest in the country.
In the US as a whole, it is estimated 4.6 million children live in home with at least one unlocked firearm.
In many cases the children know where the guns are kept.
According to recent studies between 70 and 90 per cent of guns used in school shootings, suicides and accidental shootings were obtained from the homes of relatives or friends.
