Nov. 6 (UPI) — Deliberations in the case examining poss possible gross negligence of a school assistant principal after a student shot a teacher in 2023 incident were set to resume Thursday.
Abigail Zwerner, a former teacher, said she feared death and now seeks $40 million from a Richneck Elementary School official in Newport News, Va., after Zwerner was shot in January 2023 by a six-year-old first-grade student.
“Those choices that she made to treat Jan. 6, 2023, like any other day, even though a gun should change everything, is why we’re here,” stated Zwerner attorney Kevin Biniazan on Thursday.
Zwerner testified in the civil trial in the Newport News Circuit Court that she feared for her life.
“I thought I was dying. I thought I had died,” Zwerner told jury members the very end of October.
A bullet hit her left hand and punctured in her chest where it remains. Zwerner was hospitalized with life-threatening injury.
“I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” she later told the jury. “But then it all got black.”
She alleged that Ebony Parker, the assistant principal the time, acted with gross negligence and with “reckless disregard” for the safety of Zwerner.
The former educator claimed she also still suffers pain and emotional distress following the shooting, consistent with other shooting victims.
Parker faces eight counts of felony child abuse with disregard for life connected to the 2023 school shooting in the precedent-setting court case.
On Thursday, Biniazan said a gun “changes everything,” adding that when “you stop and you investigate.”
“You get to the bottom of it to know whether that gun is real and on campus so you can deal with it,” he said. “But that’s not what happened.”
This month, Parker’s trial on the criminal charges is slated to begin.
