Warning: Graphic content A newly released body cam video from an incident in 2023 showed a six-year-old Virginia boy moments after he shot his elementary school teacher during her first-grade class. He fired a single shot from his mother’s 9-mm handgun in Newport News, Va., in January 2023, which struck Abby Zwerner’s hand and chest – narrowly missing her heart. She required five surgeries and spent weeks in hospital. The boy, whose face was blurred and not identified, used aggressive language that was bleeped out as police and a reading specialist were talking to him. One officer asked for his name, to which the boy responded: “If you want a piece of me, come get it all b---.” The boy later said: “I don’t care if I’m going to jail.” At various times in the video, the boy swore as a reading specialist held him. “We know you know that language, and you know that’s not appropriate,” the specialist told the boy. The boy shot the teacher at Richneck Elementary School during class with his mother’s legally purchased gun, The Associated Press reported. According to the attorney of Deja Taylor, the boy’s mother, she wasn’t sure how he got her gun because she thought it had a trigger lock and was stored on a closet shelf. The boy told authorities he climbed onto a drawer to get his mother’s weapon from her purse on the dresser. According to the mother, her son has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that was “off the wall.” Taylor, who pleaded guilty to a single count of felony neglect in August of that year, had apologized to the teacher. Taylor was sentenced to two years in prison for “felony child neglect” in December 2023. Zwerner was awarded US$10 million in November 2025, after she sued Ebony Parker, the school’s assistant principal, for allegedly ignoring multiple warnings that the boy had a gun. All charges of child neglect against Parker were dismissed in May 2026. With files from The Associated Press, ABC7 and WBAL-TV 11 Baltimore
