Ex-Assistant Principal at School Where 6-Year-Old Shot Teacher Is Indicted

The 6-year-old boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in December to two years in prison after pleading guilty to child neglect. Earlier, she was sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to using marijuana while possessing a firearm and making false statements about drug use. The indictment against Ms. Parker also came on the day two Michigan parents were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for failing to stop their son from killing four classmates in the world’s largest school shooting. killer in the history of this state.

The former assistant principal, who resigned after the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, is among several school employees listed as defendants in a lawsuit filed last year by the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, who was seriously injured on January 6. 2023, when the boy pulled out his gun in the middle of an afternoon class, pointed it at her and fired. A single bullet passed through Ms. Zwerner’s hand and hit her chest.

According to the suit, which seeks $40 million, the boy had “a history of random violence,” including attacks on students and teachers, whom all of the defendants knew, and had been removed from kindergarten during the year. school year 2021-2022. after strangling and suffocating a teacher. He was allowed to return in fall 2022, but was placed on a modified schedule, which required one of his parents to accompany him to school, even though neither was present on the day of the filming.

Teachers’ concerns about his behavior were regularly brought to the attention of school administrators, but were “always dismissed,” according to the civil case. The morning of the shooting, Ms. Zwerner told Ms. Parker that the boy was “in a violent mood” and had threatened to beat a younger child, but Ms. Parker had “no response,” according to the suit.

During recess, Ms. Zwerner suspected the boy might have a weapon and told two other school employees, according to the complaint. One of them searched his backpack but found nothing and, after recess, told Ms. Parker that, although she found nothing, the boy had claimed to have a gun and that Ms. Zwerner saw him remove something from his backpack, lawyers in the civil case said.