A six-year-old boy has left a teacher with fatal injuries after shooting her in a classroom, US police said.
No students or other staff members were injured during the incident, which has been described by officials as “an altercation” and “not an accident,” at Richneck Elementary School in Virginia.
The injured teacher, who is a woman in her 30s, has been taken to hospital, and Police Chief Steve Drew told reporters that she has started to show some improvement.
He added that the boy was found with a gun inside the classroom, and has been arrested.
“It wasn’t an accidental shot,” Drew said, adding that he wants to know where the gun came from.
“We didn’t have a situation where someone was rolling around the school shooting,” he continued.
“We have a situation at a specific location where a shot was fired.”
Newport News Public Schools confirmed on Facebook that parents and students had gathered outside a gymnasium, and officials have said there will be no classes Monday.
Image: Image: AP
Joselin Glover, whose nine-year-old son Carlos attends Richneck Elementary, said she received a text from the school saying one person had been shot and another was in custody.
“My heart stopped,” he told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
“I was freaking out, really nervous. I was just wondering if that person was my son.”
Carlos, who is in the fourth grade, was at recess at the time, but said he and his classmates soon hid in the back of a classroom.
“Most of the whole class was crying,” Carlos told the paper.
Image: Image: AP
“My teachers can’t control access to guns”
Schools Superintendent George Parker said he was “shocked” and “disheartened” by the shooting and called for more to be done to prevent children from getting hold of firearms.
“We need to keep guns out of the hands of our young people,” he said.
“I can’t control access to guns. My teachers can’t control access to guns.”
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Parker explained that all school campuses are equipped for random metal detector searches, but they were not deployed at Richneck Elementary on Friday.
Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s aircraft carriers and other ships for the United States Navy.
The school has about 550 students, according to the Virginia Department of Education website.