Posted on 05/18/2026 5:14:50 AM PDT by Resolute Conservative
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — A former assistant principal at an elementary school in Virginia is due in court for trial, accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school that was later used to shoot his first-grade teacher.
Ebony Parker’s criminal trial is set to start Monday in Newport News, Virginia.
Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the eight bullets in the gun that was brought into the classroom of Richneck Elementary schoolteacher Abby Zwerner in January 2023, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction.
The charges allege Parker “did commit a willful act or omission in the care of such students, in a manner so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life,” according to court documents.
Criminal charges against school officials following a school shooting are quite rare, experts say. The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.
Last November a jury awarded $10 million to Zwerner, siding with her claims in a lawsuit that Parker, an ex-assistant principal, ignored repeated warnings that the child had a gun.
Zwerner was shot as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. Sher spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.
Parker was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.
The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.
Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun prior to class recess from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.
Zwerner is scheduled to testify in the criminal case, according to court records.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he climbed to the top of a dresser to retrieve the gun from his mother’s purse.
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Maybe call 911 instead of waiting for the Didn't Earn It (DEI) hire assistant principal to do something?
I am going to guess race played a part in this.
“Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the eight bullets in the gun that was brought into the classroom”
whut...?
Like John Wick 3 movie “seven cuts for seven bullets”.
The gun had to belong to some adult.
> Maybe call 911… <
Retired big-city school teacher here. In my school district, calling 911 was a firing offense. Not kidding. We had to call the school police.
Why? School administrators could bury school police reports. Hush everything up. But they couldn’t bury city police reports.
Nothing is more important with administrators than PR. Nothing. Safety, student achievement, etc. - all that takes a back seat.
The mother was charged with a federal gun law violation or something.
What about the artisanal cheese‑making community, the precision‑tool‑and‑die‑manufacturing community, or the rowdies and roustabouts community, huh?
Weren't they shocked by this?
Regards,
The school knew for “several hours” he had the gun and nobody thought to just take the damn thing? What is wrong with people, he is 6.
So the teacher knew about the gun for a few hours, yet the assistant principal is on trial?
I can tell you didn’t read the article all the way. Baby Mommy is spending 4 years in the Big House.
Perhaps you missed this in the article:
***The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he climbed to the top of a dresser to retrieve the gun from his mother’s purse.***
Oh, not criminal trial, just a civil suit (money grab). I feel for the shot teacher, but she had every chance to prevent this as well. Unless she can point to written policy that forbade her from intervening how is she not culpable as well?
The ultimate decision maker is the administrator, assistant principal. She had the authority to call school police and shut down the school, yet after notified by teachers and students of impending violence, she did nothing. The wounded teacher recieved 10 million dollars from her 40 million dollar lawsuit.
As I recall, The assistant principal would not let the teacher go through the kid’s backpack. Teacher decided to go through it anyway while kid was at recess. The gun wasn’t there.
Students reported after recess that the kid was showing them “bullets”. Assistant principal would not let the teacher search the kid (kid had taken the gun from the backpack at recess and put it in his sweatshirt pocket). It was shortly after recess that the kid shot the teacher.
Maybe so, but many adults knew the kid had it for hours and nobody thought to just take the GD backpack... No need to call a summit meeting and lock-down the school, take the backpack.
IMO lock-downs are stupid, you are just corralling the kids as targets.
School policy. The teacher didn’t see the gun, she’d just been told about it. She reported it to the assistant principal, according to policy. The AP didn’t want to do anything about it because that would involve law enforcement and it’s more important to protect the school from negative attention than to protect teachers. If the teacher had searched the student on her own and found nothing she could have been fired for violating his rights, and since the gun was in his pocket she even could have been accused of sexual assault if she’d touched him there.
I’d rather be judge by 12 than carried by 6 and in the end she would have still won the lawsuit, but she or others would have prevented the shooting.
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