Abigail Zwerner, the elementary teacher shot by a 6-year-old student in January, filed a $40 million lawsuit in the Newport News Circuit Court against the school board and former senior administrators.
The filing explicitly named assistant principal, Ebony Parker, for breaching “her assumed duty” to protect Zwerner “despite multiple reports that a firearm was on school property and likely in possession of a violent individual.”
Zwerner’s legal team insisted in an interview on Monday that leadership at the school, Richneck Elementary, were warned on at least three separate occasions that the student possessed a gun the day of the shooting.
“On that day, over the course of a few hours, three different times — three times — school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at school and was threatening people. But the administration could not be bothered,” Diane Toscano, a lawyer representing Zwerner, said during the press conference in late January.
The school superintendent, George Parker III, as well as Principal Briana Foster Newton, were also named defendants in Zwerner’s filing whom the teacher’s legal team argues were aware of the child’s “history of random violence.”
The student was forced to transfer to another school during the previous academic year following several violent incidents. On various occasions, the boy was seen “chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it, as well as cursing at staff and teachers,” the lawsuit outlines.
Concerns about the student’s behavior were “regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed.”
“Often when he was taken to the school office to address his behavior, he would return to the classroom shortly thereafter with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy,” the lawsuit alleges.
In February, legal filings on behalf of Zwerner revealed that a fellow Virginia educator was choked to the point where “she couldn’t breathe” by the student.
“I didn’t feel safe the rest of the year because I knew if they didn’t protect me when he choked me and I couldn’t breathe, then they wouldn’t protect me, my kids or my colleagues if he did something not as harmful,” the teacher told the Associated Press on conditions of anonymity.
“There’s some things that I’ll never forget, and I just will never forget the look on his face that he gave me while he pointed the gun directly at me,” Zwerner told NBC in a March interview. “That’s something that I will never forget. It’s changed me. It’s changed my life.”
Zwerner suffered a gunshot wound to her left hand which ricocheted and entered her chest.