Name: Former Teacher Shot by Child Awarded $10 Million in Suit Against Ex-Principal
Uploaded: 2025-11-07T05:36:30.000Z
Description: The verdict is just a fraction of the $40 million Zwerner had sought, but clearly demonstrates that Parker bore responsibility for failing to prevent the incident.

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A jury in Virginia delivered a victory Thursday for Abby Zwerner, the first-grade teacher shot by a 6-year-old student, awarding her $10 million in her negligence lawsuit against Ebony Parker, the school's former assistant principal.

The verdict is just a fraction of the $40 million Zwerner had sought, but clearly demonstrates that Parker bore responsibility for failing to prevent the incident.

The shooting happened in January 2023 at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, a military shipbuilding community. Zwerner was shot while sitting at a reading table in her classroom, suffering injuries that would permanently alter her life and career.

The legal battle centered on a critical question: whether Parker, as an administrator, should have acted on warnings she received hours before the shooting that the child possessed a gun.

Zwerner testified that she first learned of the weapon from a reading specialist prior to class recess—mere hours before the attack. Zwerner's legal team argued that Parker had a fundamental duty to investigate these reports immediately and remove the threat.

"It's Dr. Parker's job to believe that that is possible. It's her job to investigate it and get to the very bottom of it," Zwerner's attorney Diane Toscano told jurors during the trial.

Parker's defense focused on the extraordinary nature of the circumstances. Her attorney Daniel Hogan urged jurors to guard against hindsight bias, arguing that administrators must be judged on the decisions they made in the moment, not on information revealed afterward. "You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable," Hogan stated. "That's the heart of this case."

Parker did not take the stand to testify in her own defense.

The physical toll on Zwerner was severe and lasting. She spent nearly two weeks hospitalized following the shooting and required six surgeries. A bullet remains lodged dangerously close to her heart, and she has lost nearly complete use of her left hand. A physician confirmed that Zwerner cannot make a tight fist with her injured hand, which retains less than half its normal grip strength.

Despite her injuries, Zwerner managed to evacuate her students from the classroom before losing consciousness in the school office.

"I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven. But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn't going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I'm hurt and they're putting pressure on where I'm hurt,” <a href="https://www.ntd.com/teacher-shot-by-first-grader-describes-moment-of-near-death-experience-on-stand_1104826.html">Zwerner testified</a> last week.

The shooting occurred on the first day the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner's phone two days earlier.

Zwerner's attorney Diane Toscano said in a statement that the verdict sends a message that what unfolded on school grounds “was wrong and is not going to be tolerated, that safety has to be the first concern at school. I think it's a great message.”

Parker was the sole defendant in the civil lawsuit. A judge had previously dismissed the school district's superintendent and the school principal as defendants in the case.

The verdict comes as Parker faces additional legal trouble. She is scheduled for a separate criminal trial this month on eight counts of felony child neglect, with each count carrying a potential sentence of up to five years in prison if she is convicted.

For Zwerner, she no longer teaches for the school district and has said she will not return to the profession. She has since become a licensed cosmetologist, beginning a new career path entirely removed from the classroom.

The 6-year-old's mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Taylor was charged with illegally possessing a firearm while using marijuana—a substance she falsely claimed to avoid on her federal background check form when she purchased the weapon.

The child obtained his mother's 9 mm handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser where the firearm was stored in his mother's purse.

<em>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</em>

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Former Teacher Shot by Child Awarded $10 Million in Suit Against Ex-Principal

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