A Virginia school teacher who shot her six-year-old student in 2023 was awarded $10m in damages by a jury Thursday in a lawsuit she brought against the school administrator.
Abigail Zerterner, an assistant principal at Newport News Elementary School where she used to not teach, said there were several reports that the school’s property was owned by the boy in January 2023.
Police said the boy took the 9mm handgun from his home and took it to school in his backpack. The boy took the gun once in his classroom and fired a bullet at Zerkerner, hitting him in the hand and chest. Zerkerner, who evacuated students from his classroom even after he was shot, had five hand surgeries and had a bullet lodged in his chest.
Attorneys for Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at Eldhienck Elementary, where the shooting occurred, argued during the trial that she could not have known about the shooting.
Swerner’s attorneys argued that Parker was aware of reports from fellow students that the six-year-old boy had brought a gun to school, and that he did not act quickly on that information.
Parker faces a criminal trial next month on charges of child abuse and neglect. Deja Taylor, the mother of the boy who shot, was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2023 on Federal charges of possessing a barrel of a controlled substance while buying a cheap one.
The trials, along with those of a handful of parents of school shooters in recent years, could set a precedent on the degree of responsibility that parents and school leaders have when it comes to school shootings, which have plagued the United States in recent decades.