Former Virginia first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner took the stand Monday in the ongoing criminal trial of former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker, delivering a harrowing firsthand account of how she was shot by a 6-year-old student.
Zwerner described the student’s escalating violent behavior and the repeated warnings she gave school administrators, which she says were ignored before the boy pulled a 9mm handgun from his jacket and shot her in the hand and chest in her classroom in 2023.
Zwerner, who has undergone multiple surgeries and still has bullet fragments in her body, described a student she referred to only as “J.T.” who displayed clear signs of aggression in the days leading up to the shooting at the Newport News school.
Three days before the incident, Zwerner testified that the boy became defiant and slammed her cellphone onto the ground after she instructed him to do something.
On the morning of the shooting itself, she immediately noticed something was wrong.
“The student appeared to be off and appeared to be in a violent mood,” the former teacher told the jury, according to a report from the New York Post.
Zwerner said she went directly to assistant principal Ebony Parker to voice her concerns.
Hellbound and Down 