Virginia Teacher Shot by 6-Year-Old Student Sues School Officials for $40 Million

The boy, whom officials haven’t named, fired one shot at

Abigail Zwerner

on Jan. 6, officials said. The 25-year-old teacher was seated at a reading table when the bullet went through her hand and upper chest, the lawsuit said. She evacuated her children out of the classroom despite her injuries and was the last one to leave.

The shooting drew national attention and raised questions about the state of gun violence in U.S. schools. The lawsuit said the boy was armed with a 9mm handgun his mother had legally purchased. She dropped him off the day of the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, a city in eastern Virginia.

Ms. Zwerner filed negligence charges against Newport News’s school board, a political subdivision of Virginia that is responsible for supervising the city’s schools, and three former administrators: the assistant principal,

Ebony Parker

; the principal,

Briana Foster Newton

; and the superintendent,

George Parker III.

The three have since left the district or been assigned to another job.

Parents, teachers and community members have criticized the school district in the past for mishandling bad student behavior.

The boy’s family has said he has an acute disability. In January, they said they were praying for Ms. Zwerner’s healing and that they were working with local and federal law enforcement.

Michelle Price,

a spokeswoman for Newport News Public Schools, said Monday the school board hadn’t been served a copy of the lawsuit so she didn’t have a response to the filing. 

Ms. Zwerner in the lawsuit requested a jury trial and damages to compensate for her post-traumatic stress disorder and physical and mental pain.

“Plaintiff has sustained and will continue to sustain pain and suffering,” the lawsuit said.

Diane Toscano,

one of Ms. Zwerner’s lawyers, said Monday that the shooting was preventable.

“The Newport News school division had a duty to Abby,” Ms. Toscano said. “But they failed her miserably that day.”

Ms. Zwerner had no further comment Monday on the lawsuit, according to one of her lawyers. She said in an interview with the “Today” show last month that a bullet was still lodged in her body.

“I just will never forget the look on his face that he gave me while he pointed the gun directly at me,” she said. 

In the lawsuit, Ms. Zwerner and her lawyers laid out a timeline of the events leading up to the shooting. They detailed the boy’s violent history. They also blamed Ms. Parker for not intervening on the day of the shooting, saying she had a reputation at the school for playing down concerns that teachers would bring her.

Ms. Parker couldn’t be reached for comment. 

The lawsuit said the boy was violent at home and school. He was sent to a different school for the remainder of his kindergarten year last school year after he choked a teacher and touched a girl inappropriately on the playground, the lawsuit said. He returned to Richneck Elementary for first grade in Ms. Zwerner’s class.  

He was placed on a modified schedule last fall in which he had to be accompanied by one of his parents all day because he had once chased students around the playground with a belt. 

His parents have said the week of the shooting was the first week they weren’t in class with him.

The lawsuit said the boy smashed Ms. Zwerner’s cellphone on the ground two days before the shooting. When other teachers responded to the episode, he cursed at them.

Ms. Zwerner told Ms. Parker, then the assistant principal, at lunchtime on the day of the shooting that the boy was in a violent mood, the lawsuit said.

“Upon hearing that information, Assistant Principal Parker had no response, refusing even to look up at Plaintiff when she expressed her concerns,” the lawsuit said, referring to Ms. Zwerner as the plaintiff.

Ms. Zwerner said she had seen the boy take something out of his backpack and put it in his sweatshirt pocket. Other students told staff members the boy had a gun but Ms. Parker allegedly refused to let anyone search him after no one had found anything in an initial search, the lawsuit said. Ms. Parker allegedly said the boy’s pockets were too small to hold a gun.

The boy fired a single bullet hours later at Ms. Zwerner, the lawsuit said.

“As a first-grade teacher at Richneck Elementary School,” the lawsuit said, “Plaintiff reasonably anticipated that she would be working with young children who posed no danger to her.”

Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com