NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — An education safety expert testified Monday that a former Richneck Elementary School administrator acted appropriately when she did not search for a gun on a 6-year-old boy who later shot his teacher.

Amy Klinger was the primary witness on behalf of Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at Richneck.

Abby Zwerner, the former Richneck first grade teacher, was shot by the student during an afternoon reading class on Jan. 6, 2023.

In a week-long civil trial in Newport News Circuit Court, Zwerner contends Parker ignored several clear warnings that the boy had a gun that day. A witness for Zwerner testified last week it was “almost shocking” that Parker didn’t take steps to find the gun.

Klinger had a different take.

She is an associate professor of educational administration at Ashland University, the director of programs for the The Educators’ School Safety Network and the author of a book “Keeping Students Safe Every Day.”

“No one is the sole person responsible for school safety,” Klinger testified. “School safety is a collaborative endeavor. Every person who is in that organization has roles and responsibilities related to safety.”

Teachers, staffers, administration and students all have “a very critical role in school safety as well as responsibilities related to those roles,” she added.

Though an assistant principal is the “aggregator” for information, Parker depended on others to provide context.

“A school administrator cannot be everywhere,” Klinger said. “They cannot see everything.”

Moreover, she said, school administrators must be able to balance the level of threats and make sure not to overreact. It’s not proper, Klinger added, “to go to DEFCON 5 on every single threat,” which she said “can make the school less safe because people become numb to it.”

Parker’s attorney, Sandra Douglas, asked Klinger if Parker breached “any professional standards” on Jan. 6, 2023.

“She did not,” Klinger said.

Douglas then asked whether Parker “was indifferent to Ms. Zwerner” in regard to her safety.

“She was not,” Klinger replied.

Klinger asserted that an assistant principal depends on others for good information.

While Zwerner’s lawyers assert that Parker was grossly negligent in failing to prevent the shooting, the defense is seeking to shift significant responsibility to others — such as Zwerner, reading specialist Amy Kovac, teacher Jennifer West and guidance counselor Rolonzo Rawles.

Those employees, Klinger said, did not remove the boy from the classroom to search his bag. They did not call for a lockdown, clear classrooms or call 911.

For example, when two students told Kovac that the boy was armed, she went into Zwerner’s classroom to speak with the 6-year-old during class. When the boy would not allow his book bag to be searched, “she did not remove the book bag.”

“She did not remove the student,” Klinger said. “She did not remove the other students.” She left the book bag in the room with the other students when she left to speak to Parker about the matter.

When Zwerner was told of concerns about the boy having a gun, Klinger said, “instruction went on, and the students remained in the classroom.”

Given the age of the student, Klinger said, the boy having a real gun in school — as opposed to a toy gun — did not seem “foreseeable.”

An attorney for Zwerner, Kevin Biniazan, grilled Klinger during an intense cross-examination.

He asked if an assistant principal can “just sit in their chair and wait for information to come to them.”

“I think that an assistant principal can have a reasonable expectation that if there’s something she needs to know, people will tell her,” Klinger said.

“So they should just assume everything’s OK unless somebody comes and tells her more?” Biniazan asked.

Klinger said it doesn’t make sense for the administrator to “go door to door to ask everybody, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’ … That’s not really feasible for the management of the school.”

Biniazan noted that there wasn’t a random concern that an unknown student had a gun — but a specific concern about a specific student at a particular time.

“Because communication is a two-way street, and getting good information is a two-way street, you would expect the assistant principal to attempt to get some information herself,” Biniazan said.

He asked whether Parker ever “left her chair” to “go and inquire with the student” who was alleged to have the gun.

“No,” Klinger acknowledged.

“At what point in the day did Dr. Parker leave her desk to go talk to girl No. 1?

Klinger said that Parker didn’t know who “girl No. 1” was since Kovac didn’t get the girls’ names.

“So Dr. Parker’s obligation there stops because she doesn’t get good information, so she can sit back and just rely upon the fact that she didn’t get good information?”

“That’s not what I said,” Klinger said. “I said it would be difficult to interview a student if you don’t know who that student is.”

Contending that Parker knew for more than an hour that there might be a gun “on campus,” Biniazan asked Klinger whether the evidence was “sufficient for her to suspect there was a gun at Richneck Elementary School.”

In her response, Klinger attempted to soften that language: “It was sufficient for her to understand that there was a concern about the potential of a gun on campus.”

According to Zwerner’s lawsuit and the recent trial testimony, Zwerner approached Parker after 11:15 a.m. to say that the boy was “in a violent mood” and “threatened to beat up a kindergartner during lunchtime.”

Parker didn’t look up or speak to Zwerner, according to trial testimony. “I thought it was rude,” Kovac testified.

But after Zwerner left the office, Parker told Kovac to pass on to Zwerner that she could call the boy’s mother to pick him up early if needed.

Later that morning, two girls in Zwerner’s class went up to Kovac — who worked with the boy closely — to say that the boy had a gun. Kovac ended up sitting next to the boy during Zwerner’s class and asking him if she could search his bag.

He said no, and that “nobody’s getting in this bag.”

Kovac left the classroom to report what the girls had said, telling Parker that the bag had not been searched. Parker did not ask that the bag be confiscated or any other steps be taken.

Around 12:20 p.m., Zwerner was lining up the students for recess when the boy put on an over-sized zip-up jacket and rummaged through his backpack and put both hands inside it. She texted Kovac to tell her what she saw.

Kovac testified that she approached Parker and told her she would be searching the boy’s backpack while he was at recess, with Parker nodding in agreement. Kovac searched the boy’s backpack, but no gun was found — given that the boy took it with him to recess.

Kovac said she told Parker she had searched the backpack but found nothing. But Kovac also told Parker Zwerner saw the boy put something in his jacket pocket, with Parker responding that the boy “has little pockets.”

When recess ended, the other first-grade teacher, West, pulled another student aside and asked why he and the 6-year-old were going behind a rock wall at recess.

That boy, through tears, told West that the student showed him the gun — and threatened to harm him if he told anyone.

West called the school officer to relay that to Parker through a music teacher who picked up the phone. The music teacher relayed that to Parker, who said the boy’s bag had already been searched.

And when a guidance counselor, Rawles, went to Parker asking if he could search the boy’s person for the gun, Parker said no, noting the boy’s mother would soon be picking him up.

But at 2 p.m. that day, the boy — seated at his desk — pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket, and fired at Zwerner, who was sitting at a table about 10 feet away. A bullet shattered her left hand, with a fragment lodged in her chest.

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