In a lawsuit, former school administrator Ebony Parker is being accused of failing to act after being informed by a first-grade teacher, a guidance counselor, a music teacher, and a reading specialist that a child might have a gun. Parker resigned following the shooting incident.
“No one expected a 6-year-old first grader to bring a firearm to school,” said Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, to the jury. “You should decide for yourselves if this was something that could have been anticipated. That’s really the heart of this case.”
During her opening statement, Zwerner’s lawyer, Diane Toscano, described the horrifying moment of the shooting, stating, “‘1:58 p.m., bang!’ The bullet passed through Abby’s hand and then into her chest.” She emphasized that the bullet remains lodged in Zwerner’s body as it was too dangerous to remove.
“She made a grave error that day,” Toscano remarked.
Hogan defended the collaborative nature of decision-making in public schools, cautioning against the tendency for hindsight bias and what he termed as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
“The law recognizes how unfair it is to judge others’ decisions based on what we know after the fact,” Hogan commented, reminding listeners that decisions should be considered in their own time.
Dr. Nina Farish, the HR director for Newport News Public Schools, testified that just two or three days after the shooting, there was a report at around 12:20 p.m. regarding a student having a gun in a backpack. This was over 90 minutes before the actual shooting.
A teacher named Kovacs recounted how she approached the boy, asking to see his bag, to which he replied, “No, no one has received the bag.” She later returned to Parker, suggesting the child may have concealed a weapon in his coat pocket. Minutes after, gunshots rang out, and she rushed to Zwerner’s classroom.
Kovacs described witnessing the child standing with his legs spread and arms crossed.
Toscano argued that Parker held the authority to intervene as principal. “Who would think a 6-year-old would bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” she questioned. “Dr. Parker needs to consider that it’s a possibility.”
Dejah Taylor, the mother of the boy who shot Zwerner, has since been sentenced to two years in prison for felony neglect and federal weapons charges.
