NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A jury in Newport News Circuit Court on Thursday handed down a $10 million verdict in the case of a teacher at Richneck Elementary School shot by a 6-year-old student in early 2023.

The seven-member panel issued its verdict about 12:30 p.m., after about 5 1/2 hours of deliberations over two days.

Just before 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2023, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner was seated at a table during a first grade reading class. That’s when a student drew a handgun from his front hoodie pocket and fired a single round at Zwerner.

Zwerner raised her left hand as the gun was fired. The bullet seriously wounded her hand, with a large fragment ending up lodged in her chest, where it remains today. The shooting generated headlines around the world.

Zwerner shuttled students out of the classroom after the shooting, then collapsed to the floor in the school’s main office. She was released from the hospital after 10 days.

During a jury trial that began Oct. 27, Zwerner contended that Richneck’s former assistant principal, Ebony J. Parker, was “grossly negligent” that day. They assert that she ignored clear warning signs that the boy had a gun.

According to trial testimony, three first grade students told teachers that the boy had a gun. Two girls reported that he had a gun in a bag, while another student told a teacher that he showed him a gun during recess.

“The road signs were screaming at her, flashing at her, telling her what was going to happen if she did not act,” said Kevin Biniazan, one of Zwerner’s attorneys. “She blew past the signs.”

While several teachers and staffers “had a piece of the puzzle,” Biniazan said, Parker alone “had the entire puzzle,” and it was up to her to take steps to search for boy.

But attorneys for Parker contended that other teachers and staff could have done more, asserting that the blame for not finding the gun does not fall on Parker. Moreover, they said, a 6-year-old old shooting his teacher appeared to be so remote at the time.

Sandra Douglas, one of Parker’s lawyers, asked the jurors to look at the case using “real-time judgements, not hind-sight judgements.”

“It was unforeseeable,” Douglas said. “It was unthinkable. And it was unprecedented.”

The verdict against Parker is being covered by the Newport News School Board’s insurance pool, the Virginia Risk Sharing Association. That pool is also covering the costs of the three Richmond lawyers that the association hired to represent Parker in the case.

Parker is covered under that policy because she was working for the school division at the time of the shooting. But there’s a potential issue with Parker’s coverage if she’s convicted in a pending criminal case.

That is, Parker faces eight counts of felony child neglect in a three-day criminal trial scheduled to begin in late November. If she is convicted, experts say, the insurance firm could attempt to deny Parker coverage in the civil case.

Zwerner had disciplinary issues with the 6-year-old in the days leading up to the shooting. A couple days before, he grabbed the teacher’s phone and slammed it to a classroom floor, breaking the screen.

On the morning of the shooting, the boy climbed atop his mother’s dresser, grabbed the gun from her purse and stuffed it into his backpack.

According to 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 lunch.

Parker didn’t look up or speak to Zwerner, according to trial testimony. “I thought it was rude,” according to reading specialist Amy Kovac, who was standing nearby.

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.

About noon, 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 for about 30 minutes 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 oversized 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 went to Parker and told her she would be searching the boy’s backpack while he was at recess, with Parker nodding her head 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, and relayed that Zwerner saw him put something in his jacket pocket.

“He has little pockets,” Parker responded, according to Kovac. In other words, the pockets were too small to hold a gun. Kovac said she responded that the boy was wearing a jacket, but that nothing was done.

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 office on a different matter when she asked the music teacher who picked up the phone if the boy had been searched. But when the music teacher relayed that to Parker, she said the boy’s bag had been searched.

A guidance counselor, Rolonzo Rawles, talked with the boy who had seen the gun or ammunition at recess. Rawles said he asked Parker if he could search the boy’s “person” for the gun. But Parker said to hold off, noting that the boy’s mother would soon be picking him up.

“Each of them sounded the alarm,” Biniazan said of the teachers, saying Parker should have suspected a gun on campus for an hour and 20 minutes. Zwerner, he said, “waited on the cavalry, and no one came.”

Biniazan asked the jury to return a verdict of $40 million to compensate for Zwerner for what she lost emotionally and physically over a lifetime.

“Anything less than full justice is an injustice,” he said.

Biniazan pointed out the fact that the bullet fragment is lodged two centimeters from Zwerner’s aorta. According to trial testimony, that means she can never get an MRI, given the possibility that the metal fragment could shift.

“She’ll have to say, ‘I can’t have that test … that I might need,’” Biniazan said.

And she no longer can teach, he said. “Her choice to be what she wanted to be is changed and taken from her.”

While Zwerner’s lawyers assert Parker was responsible for failing to prevent the shooting, Parker’s attorneys sought to cast blame on others who didn’t find the gun.

Douglas noted that when two first-grade girls in Zwerner’s class told Kovac that the boy had a gun in his backpack, she did not sound the alarms.

“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.

In a text message to Parker within days of the shooting, Kovac complimented Parker and expressed regret for not sending the boy out of the room. “I could have gotten that book bag,” she said.

Douglas asserted that Zwerner, too, allowed instruction to go on in her class despite knowing of the concern about the boy having a gun. She, too, could have removed the boy from the classroom.

Douglas noted that Zwerner has gotten her license to be a hairdresser, which requires manual dexterity. Douglas disputed Zwerner’s assertion during trial that she finds it hard to open a bag of chips.

“This case is a terrible tragedy on so many levels,” Douglas said. “Please don’t compound that tragedy by blaming Dr. Parker for it.”

During closing arguments, Biniazan referenced the fact that Parker wasn’t taking the stand in her own defense .

Parker has a felony child neglect case pending against her in reference to the same incident, and her lawyers made it clear before trial that she wouldn’t be testifying under her Fifth Amendment rights.

Biniazan’s motion triggered an immediate motion for a mistrial from one of Parker’s lawyers, Daniel Hogan, who said Parker isn’t obligated to testify.

While Judge Hoffman expressed dismay that Biniazan raised the issue in his closing, he declined to order a mistrial. Instead, Hoffman said he would issue an instruction to the jury to disregard the attorney’s statement.

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