Deliberations to resume Thursday in lawsuit filed by Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old student

By Cindy Von Quednow, Chris Boyette, CNN

(CNN) — Deliberations will resume Thursday after a jury deliberated for nearly two hours in the $40 million lawsuit filed by a former Virginia teacher shot by her 6-year-old student in a case that could set a dramatic precedent for who to blame after school shootings.

“A gun changes everything,” a lawyer for the teacher, Abby Zwerner, told jurors Wednesday, stressing it was the job of defendant Ebony Parker, then an assistant principal, to make sure everyone on campus was safe after people raised concerns a child had a gun.

“You stop and you investigate. You get to the bottom of it,” attorney Kevin Biniazan continued. “You get to the bottom of that backpack. You get to the bottom of his pockets, whatever it is. You get to the bottom of it to know whether that gun is real and on campus so you can deal with it.

“But that’s not what happened.”

Zwerner is suing Parker, who is accused of neglecting to act on concerns the student had a gun in January 2023 at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Parker’s attorneys have argued no one could fathom a child so young would bring a gun to school and carry out a shooting. Parker did not take the stand during the trial that began last week but was in court through it.

“You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable. That’s the heart of this case,” Parker’s attorney, Daniel Hogan, said earlier in the trial.

In his closing argument, Biniazan challenged that position.

“You cannot stick your head in the sand and then come into court and say, ‘I didn’t have the information,’ when it was your job to find it,” Zwerner’s lawyer said Wednesday. “Every second that a gun is in the possession of a 6-year-old, who I agree, has totally unpredictable behavior … All the more reason to find the gun.”

At the center of the lawsuit is who gets the blame when children have access to guns and carry out school shootings, which continue to plague the country. As of last week, there were 64 US school shootings this year, 27 of them on K-12 school grounds.

“Parker did not have a legal duty to protect Miss Zwerner,” Sandra Douglas, one of Parker’s attorneys said in her closing argument. “She did not volunteer to protect Miss Zwerner.”

Douglas sought to discredit the testimony of the plaintiff’s witnesses, recounting the school’s reading specialist was the first to hear the student might have a gun, and she and the school guidance counselor did not remove the student or his backpack from the room.

Douglas said the reading specialist previously said she thought there might be a toy gun, but testified during the trial she told Parker students had told her the boy had a gun. She texted Parker two days later saying she should have removed the student from the class herself.

“You’re the judges of the credibility of these witnesses,” Douglas said.

She argued Zwerner should have talked to Parker herself, and she had discussions with Parker about the student’s behavior during lunch, but not about a report of the gun.

“It was largely unthinkable and certainly unprecedented. Your job is to consider only what Dr. Parker knew at the time,” Douglas said.

The defense attorney challenged the testimony that Zwerner was unable to fully use her hand because she graduated cosmetology school. And she challenged that while witnesses testified Zwerner had trouble leaving the house, she went to concerts in the months after the shooting.

“I’m not minimizing what happened to Miss Zwerner,” Douglas said. “I’m not doing that.”

In rebuttal, Biniazan characterized the defense argument as “everyone is lying” and pointed out they didn’t call any witnesses from the school.

“The only people they called as an expert were the people that they paid to come into this courtroom,” he said.

The civil trial offers a window to some of the key details that will be presented during the criminal case next month against Parker, who faces eight counts of felony child neglect. Filing charges against school officials in the aftermath of a school shooting is rare.

In instructions given to the jury Wednesday, the judge told jurors they’d be deciding whether Parker was grossly negligent and whether her negligence caused Zwerner’s injury and damages. Jurors were also tasked with deciding whether Zwerner was negligent and caused any of her own damages; if so, she would be barred from recovering any money from Parker, the judge instructed the jury.

Injured teacher shared emotional testimony

Zwerner testified about the physical and emotional consequences wrought by the shooting. After she was shot in the chest and hand while sitting at a reading table, Zwerner thought she had died and gone to heaven.

“I thought I was dying. I thought I had died,” she said last week.

The teacher now says she’s more reserved and sometimes gets overwhelmed at the thought of going out in public.

Zwerner’s twin sister, Hannah, also testified how Abby’s demeanor changed after the shooting: She was full of light, outgoing and silly, but now “she’s just not the person that she was,” Hannah said during her emotional testimony.

Zwerner has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after the shooting, psychiatrist Dr. Clarence Watson testified last week. And Zwerner’s devastating hand injury has left her unable to perform daily activities.

Despite six surgeries, Zwerner’s hand will never be normal, an orthopedic surgeon testified earlier in the trial.

Previous testimony from doctors on her care team revealed Zwerner’s injuries were life-threatening after a bullet narrowly missed her heart. And the impacts extended beyond the physical damage, she testified.

During cross-examination, an attorney for Parker worked to undermine Zwerner’s claims the shooting had limited her willingness to go out in public, saying she was emotionally ready to attend concerts like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

The attorney also sought to undermine claims Zwerner is physically hindered by her wounds, asking how she successfully attended and graduated from cosmetology school, worked and frequented a gym if she had physical limitations.

Assistant principal did not act with indifference, expert testifies

An expert for the defense testified Monday the assistant principal did not breach professional standards or act with indifference.

Dr. Amy Klinger, an expert in education administration and school safety, said it would have been difficult for anyone to foresee the incident and testified the assistant principal’s role is collaborative and school safety is a shared responsibility among all staff.

“No one is the sole person responsible for school safety,” she said.

Parker did not breach professional standards or act with indifference, Klinger said, and it would have been difficult for anyone to foresee the incident.

This case could set a precedent for future events, said Darryl K. Brown, a law professor at the University of Virginia, adding the civil trial could be a “dry run” for what’s to come in the criminal case.

“Everyone on both sides the prosecution and the defense should have a very clear idea of what the evidence is going to be and what the witnesses are going to say,” the professor said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.