The apparently deliberate shooting of a Virginia school teacher by a gun-wielding six-year-old has shocked many in the United States, sparking outrage and horror even in a country accustomed to regular school shootings which are rare elsewhere in the world. .
Authorities have not described the exact circumstances of the shooting or how they believe the boy came into possession of the gun or who it belongs to. It may be difficult for them to define exactly what steps can be taken against someone so young, who is now in custody.
“We’re making sure he has all the services he needs right now,” Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones said Saturday.
The mayor said he considers the incident, the first recorded shooting at an American school in 2023, “a red flag for our country.” Jones added: “I think after this event, there will be a national discussion about how these types of things can be prevented.”
The condition of the teacher, Abby Zwerner, 25, “is trending positively,” Jones said over the weekend after she was admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
Authorities have said it was “not an accidental shooting” and part of an altercation when the unnamed first-grader in a class at Richneck Elementary in Virginia City pulled out a gun and shot Zwerner in the abdomen causing fatal injuries. Zwerner reportedly warned his students to run as he lay bleeding on the classroom floor.
Richneck Principal Briana Foster Newton said in a statement, “My heart goes out to our school community. The tragic event that happened on Friday affects us all deeply.”
School shootings in the US by a student this young are rare, but not unprecedented. Gun violence experts say there have been only three more shootings by six-year-old students among 16 incidents involving shooters younger than 10 since 1970. But those incidents have typically involved other students, not educators.
“It’s very rare and it’s not something that the legal system is really designed or positioned to deal with,” researcher David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shootings Database, told the Associated Press.
Virginia law does not allow six-year-olds to be tried as adults, nor, if found guilty in juvenile court, are they old enough to be placed in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice. However, the authorities would have the power to revoke the parents’ custodial rights.
Cases of children accidentally shooting themselves or others at home or elsewhere are on the rise, said Daniel Webster, a professor of gun violence at Johns Hopkins University.
“A six-year-old getting access to a loaded gun and shooting himself or someone else, unfortunately, is not that uncommon,” Webster told the AP.
According to Education Week, there have been 145 school shootings in the US since 2018 that resulted in injuries or deaths. Last year there were 51, compared to 35 in 2021 and 10 in 2020. The previous two years recorded 24 each.
But the Richneck school district has had three incidents of gun violence on district property in 17 months, including an incident in September 2021 when a 16-year-old fired multiple shots in a busy hallway during lunch and injured two 17-year-olds. Two months later, an 18-year-old fatally shot a younger student after a football game, according to Wavy.
Parents of students schooled in the district said installing metal detectors, hiring more staff, mental health counselors and stricter visitor policies at schools could help reduce the risk.
“The district’s response has left parents like me feeling that the violence that is happening in the schools is not being adequately addressed,” Molly Hunter, a mother of three, told NBC News.
“I think the district is working hard — they’ve had a hard time staffing our schools. It seems like they’re stretched thin and the violence issues are out of control,” Hunter said.
The Virginia Department of Education website said there will be no classes at the school where the shooting occurred Monday and Tuesday.
“Our students got a lesson in gun violence,” said Superintendent of Schools George Parker, “and what guns can do to disrupt, not just an educational environment, but a family, a community.”