A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school ignored multiple warnings that a 6-year-old student was carrying a gun in the hours before he shot his teacher, the teacher’s attorney said Tuesday as trial began in the woman’s $40 million lawsuit.
Abby Zwirner, a first-grade teacher at Rechnick Elementary School in Newport News, was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 while sitting at a reading table in her classroom. Zwirner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and cannot fully use her left hand. Bullet still in her chest.
The lawsuit accuses former school principal Ebony Parker of failing to act after four different people went to her over concerns that the student had brought a gun to school.
Zwirner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, said in her opening statements that Parker made “bad decisions and choices that day.”
Toscano added that Parker had the authority but failed to search the student, remove him from the classroom, and call law enforcement.
Toscano said the shooting occurred on the first day after the student returned from suspension for hitting Zwirner’s phone two days earlier. It sent shockwaves through the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how a child so young could get a gun and shoot his teacher.
“No one would have imagined that a 6-year-old first grader would bring a firearm to school,” Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, told the jury. “You will be able to judge for yourself whether this was expected or not. That is the crux of this case.”
Decision making in the public school environment is “collaborative” and “collaborative,” Hogan said. He also warned against hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
“The law knows that it’s fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decisions based on things that came to light after the fact,” Hogan said. “The law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they are made.”
Parker is the sole defendant in the lawsuit. The judge previously fired the district superintendent and the school principal.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect — one for each of “the eight bullets that endangered all students” in Zwirner’s classroom, prosecutors said.
Experts say criminal charges against school officials after school shootings are very rare. Each charge is punishable by up to five years in prison upon conviction.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on child neglect and federal weapons charges.
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