Teacher suing school administrator testifies to being shot by 6-year-old student

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (CN) —When her elementary school student shot Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner in the chest, she thought she had died.

“I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” the former Richneck Elementary School teacher said in court Thursday. “But then it all got black, and so I then thought I wasn’t going there.”

Zwerner took the witness stand during the third day of her civil trial against Assistant Principal Ebony Parker for gross negligence for her role in the shooting. Zwerner, who seeks $40 million in damages, claims Parker breached her assumed duty of care when she refused to remove the 6-year old boy from class, despite three staff members voicing numerous safety concerns throughout the day.

Teachers informed Parker of their suspicion that the student had a firearm, but Parker reportedly declined to search his person until his mother came. Zwerner claims she told Parker hours before the shooting that the boy was in a violent mood and was threatening another student.

Zwerner said that Parker failed to respond and even refused to look up at Zwerner when she expressed her concerns.

Zwerner argues Parker failed to follow protocol requiring administrators to remove students deemed threats from the classroom and call the police.

But Parker’s attorneys say that no one could have imagined a child as young as the student would shoot his teacher. The administrator argues Zwerner herself is partially to blame for the shooting, as she did not remove the student from the class or ask Parker for help, instead relying on a coworker.

Zwerner rested her case Thursday after calling 16 witnesses, including doctors, family members, coworkers and first responders. After calling on coworkers to outline Parker’s purported failures, Zwerner took the stand to speak about her firsthand experience.

“The look on the student’s face is the large memory that I have,” Zwerner said. “I do remember it was like a very blank look.”

The student purportedly had a lengthy history of behavioral issues dating to kindergarten, where he reportedly strangled a teacher, and had destroyed Zwerner’s phone two days before the shooting.

Zwerner’s twin sister, Hannah Zwerner, spoke about her sister’s demeanor before and after the Jan. 6, 2023, shooting.

“Full of light and spark and just so outgoing and just silly,” Hannah Zwerner said. “She’s just not the person that she was. I feel like she’s kind of lost her sense of direction.”

Abigail Zwerner’s forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Clarence Watson, detailed the teacher’s struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder following the shooting.

“One of the very important pieces about Ms. Zwerner’s case is that she has every day reminders, permanent physical scars, reminding her of that particular day,” Watson said. “It’s not just that she has psychological scars that she’s dealing with from the trauma; she has impairment in her normal functioning.”

Watson spoke about Zwerner’s recurring nightmares that involve her hiding in the school from the student before ultimately being shot again.

“There was a point where Ms. Zwerner experienced passive suicidal thoughts because of the stress that she was feeling on a daily basis, that happened after the Jan. 6 shooting, and she had not experienced that before,” Watson said. “When a person continues to have nightmares, what that tells me is that that person continues to struggle with such difficulty consciously related to those  traumatic events that they can’t even escape during sleep, that their unconscious presses into their sleep and then influences their dreams.”

Parker’s attorneys refuted Zwerner’s claims of lasting psychological damage, arguing that she went to an electronic dance music and a Taylor Swift concert after the shooting. Watson proffered that it was a good thing Zwerner went to concerts and that it doesn’t invalidate her trauma.

“She is not going back to a concert in the way that she once upon a time went to a concert,” Watson said. “I want them to try to get better, to see and test the bounds, because that means they want to get back to their lives. They don’t want to just sit at home and sit in their symptoms and cut their lives off.”

Parker’s attorneys pointed to her taking a part-time job at her gym after the shooting as proof that the shooting didn’t impact her as much as she and her experts had testified.

“I just wanted to feel like a person again,” Zwerner said of taking the job. “I just felt like I needed to be pushed to do that.”

Zwerner also illustrated the physical problems she faces after suffering a gunshot that went through her left hand and into her chest, causing a lung to collapse. Zwerner spoke about having difficulty with everyday tasks, such as opening a bag of potato chips. Attorneys representing Parker emphasized that Zwerner has since completed cosmetology school and frequently exercises at the gym.

“I had a lot of pain. I had a lot of help,” Zwerner said of completing cosmetology school. “But I did it."

Chief Circuit Judge Matthew Hoffman denied the defense’s motion to strike the case after they argued Zwerner had failed to show a cause of action.

“The court finds that there is sufficient and credible evidence that the defendant assumed a duty of care, breached that care in a grossly negligent manner and that breach was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s harm,” Hoffman said. “That will be all for the jury to decide.”

The defense will begin calling witnesses Friday.