NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Virginia prosecutor said Thursday that he will pursue the case against a former assistant principal indicted on a felony child neglect charge at the elementary school where a 6-year-old shot a teacher last year, and suggested others could be charged as the investigation continues.
A day after a special grand jury’s report outlining the case against ex-administrator Ebony Parker was made public, Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told reporters that he was “troubled” by the findings but believes the charge is warranted. He added that he had never brought a charge against a school administrator or heard of it being done as it relates to this case, but that “we go wherever the facts will lead us.”
“I never thought about this as precedential,” Gwynn said. “I simply think about this as us doing our jobs. And so, whether it has any precedent or not, it’s not really relevant to what we do and it has no bearing into any decision we make.”
The shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on Jan. 6, 2023, brought national attention to school safety and stunned the community when police announced the child’s actions appeared intentional.
Legal experts say it remains rare for charges to be brought against parents, adminstrators or other adults when a child commits gun violence at school. But some say the recent involuntary manslaughter trials of the Michigan parents of a teenage school shooter who killed four classmates — the first parents in the U.S. to be held criminally responsible for a mass shooting committed by their child — could set a legal precedent leading to similar prosecutions.
Gwynn said there is a message to be sent when charges are brought in the fallout of school shootings and that “the safety of children and staff and administrators should be taken seriously.”
“Everything you do and say sends a message. And what is the message that you want to send by your conduct,” Gwynn said of school officials, adding it should be: “‘We got to do everything we can to protect you. We know this is a dangerous situation. So we got to do everything we can to protect you because that’s what we signed up for.'”
In Newport News, the 6-year-old student, who has not been named, used a 9 mm handgun to shoot his teacher, Abigail Zwerner, while she sat at a reading table in their first-grade classroom. She was seriously injured but survived, and managed to escort her class of about 15 students to safety, police said.
On the day of the shooting, Parker, Richneck’s assistant principal at the time, was made aware by other staff and students on four occasions that the child might be a “potentially dangerous threat,” according to the grand jury’s report.
“Dr. Parker’s lack of response and initiative given the seriousness of the information she had received on January 6, 2023 is shocking,” the report says.
Parker, who resigned in the wake of the shooting, has been charged with eight counts of felony child abuse — each one representing the number of bullets that the boy had in the gun, Gwynn said. She appeared in Newport News Circuit Court earlier Tuesday for a hearing with her lawyer, and another hearing was set for next month ahead of a trial.
If found guilty, she faces up to five years in prison per count.
It was unclear if she has already entered a plea, and her lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment following the hearing.
The 11-member grand jury, which was impaneled in September, said it heard from 19 witnesses, reviewed several hundred documents of school records and watched police bodycam and other video to make its determination.
Its report provided further details about the events leading up to the shooting and during it, among them that after the boy shot Zwerner at less than 6 feet away, he tried to fire again but was thwarted.
“The child continued to stare at her, not changing his emotional facial expression as he tried to shoot again,” the report says. “The firearm had jammed due to his lack of strength on the first shot inhibiting him from shooting Ms. Zwerner or anyone else again. The firearm had a full magazine with seven additional bullets ready to fire if not for the firearm jamming.”
Gwynn said Thursday that he was disturbed by other details and allegations in the report, including that students were traumatized following the shooting and unable to transfer schools and how a friend of the 6-year-old boy tried to warn adults at the school about the gun and “feels guilty today that nobody listened to them.”
He added that an investigation is ongoing into missing documents regarding the student’s behavioral file.
The grand jury report notes the boy’s disciplinary issues, including in the days before the shooting, when he was “defiant during recess,” “constantly spoke back to Zwerner,” slammed her phone on the ground at reading time, causing the screen to crack, and used an expletive toward her. He was suspended for one day after that incident.
Gwynn said his office is working with school leadership to determine what happened to the missing documents in his file, and if someone is found to have illegally removed them, “trust me when I tell you, ‘They will be charged.'”
The school board of the Newport News Public Schools said in a statement Thursday that the district has since implemented several changes following the shooting and “will continue to do so in the future.” The district had installed metal detectors at all of its schools and brought in new leadership.
“Safety of students and staff remain a top priority for the School Board,” the school board said.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Gwynn told NBC News that he would not seek charges against the 6-year-old boy, citing his age and inability to adequately understand the legal system, but he said he was still weighing whether he might hold any adults criminally responsible.
The child’s family has said that he has an “acute disability” and that he had received the “treatment he needs” under court-ordered temporary detention at a medical facility.
A year ago, Gwynn also sought a grand jury to determine charges against the boy’s mother, Deja Taylor. She was sentenced in December to two years in prison on a state charge of felony child neglect and must begin her state sentence after she finishes serving 21 months on a related federal charge.
Three months after the shooting, Zwerner also filed a $40 million lawsuit against the school district alleging that administrators, including Parker, failed to heed warnings. The grand jury’s findings are similar to her complaint.
Lawyers for Zwerner, 26, said the report echoes the “systemic failure” at the school and planned to hold a news conference Thursday.
Owen Hayes reported from Newport News, Erik Ortiz from New York and Julia Jester from Washington.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
