A former Virginia school teacher was awarded $10 million in damages Thursday after she was shot by a 6-year-old student in 2023. A jury found the former assistant principal, Ebony Parker, had ignored warning signs that the student was bringing a gun to school.
Abby Zwerner filed a lawsuit against school officials in April 2023, months after she was shot at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia.
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A panel of three men and four women spent a total of six hours deliberating, following testimony last week.
“We the jury on the issues joined find in favor of plaintiff, Abigail Zwerner, and assess her damages at $10 million and award interest beginning on June 1, 2024” the court clerk read.
The case
In her lawsuit, Zwerner said she was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 by a boy whom Parker could’ve stopped.
Zwerner originally sought $40 million in damages, claiming Parker ignored “at least three separate warnings from teachers and staff that students had seen the firearm” and that the student had “removed an object that was likely a firearm from his backpack before it was searched.”
During testimony, two school instructors testified to that claim, saying they’d expressed concerns to Parker that the student had a gun. However, the weapon wasn’t taken from the child until he shot Zwerner.
In addition to the lawsuit, Parker is also facing criminal charges of felony child abuse and neglect for her alleged indifference.
Punishing adults for children’s actions
Zwerner’s lawsuit and Parker’s upcoming criminal trial both come amid a shift in response to school shootings involving minors.
Until recent years, parents and school administrators have not faced criminal convictions for their child’s or student’s actions.
However, the 2021 manslaughter conviction of Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, whose son shot and killed four students at his school, marked an unprecedented shift. They became the first U.S. parents to face criminal punishment over the actions of their child.
A Johns Hopkins discussion looked into why parents haven’t faced charges previously, and noted oftentimes, the child who does the shooting dies before they can face charges.
“For prosecutors, sometimes it’s difficult to imagine trying a parent who is mourning the loss of their child,” the Johns Hopkins discussion post reads.
Nonprofit RAND also conducted research into the recent trend of charging parents and found it likely to become a more widely adopted practice. It said child-access prevention laws — which make it a crime for parents to store firearms where a child can access them — reduce firearm suicides and homicides among young people.
“This suggests that implementing and enforcing child-access laws can be a critical step in preventing firearm access that could lead to tragic outcomes,” RAND wrote in a published commentary.
In the recent Virginia case, the 6-year-old’s mother faced criminal charges. She was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and weapons charges.
If Parker is found guilty in her criminal case, she could become one of the first school officials to face punishment for a child’s actions.
