HAUNTED BY GUN MEMORY
Shot Virginia teacher bares pain
A Virginia elementary teacher says she is haunted by the look on the face of the 6-year-old student who shot her with his mom’s gun in January and still has a bullet lodged in her chest from the “shocking” incident.
Abigail Zwerner, 25, spoke for the first time Tuesday about sustaining serious injuries at the hands of one of her first-grade students with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today.”
“I remember him pointing the gun at me, I remember the look on his face, I remember the gun going off,” she recalled of the moment the child fired the weapon at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News Jan. 6.
“There’s some things that I’ll never forget. And I just will never forget the look on his face . . . It’s changed me. It’s changed my life.”
Zwerner said she believed she only survived because the bullet went through her hand before penetrating her chest and collapsing her lung. Part of the bullet, she said, remains in her chest.
“I think it will always be there,” Zwerner said emotionally. “At first it really shook me up . . . seeing an open wound on your body and remembering how you got it is pretty traumatizing.”
After the shooting, it was revealed that school officials were warned by a teacher that the unnamed student had a gun in his backpack and was showing it to another student at recess.
Officials failed to act on the tip, and the principal of the school was ousted in the wake of the shooting. The student had brought the 9 mm gun into school and opened fire a day after smashing Zwerner’s phone, the teacher said.
‘At fault’
When asked if she felt administrators should have done more to prevent the incident, Zwerner — who is taking legal action against the district — nodded and said, “Yes.”
“There are multiple people responsible for those failures,” her attorney Diane Toscano told Guthrie.
Zwerner said there are days when she struggles to “get out of bed,” but she tries to “stay positive,” buoyed by the outpouring of public support.
“I’m just so thankful,” Zwerner said of the messages. “Their messages, their cards, their support has not gone unnoticed.”
Many were drawn to Zwerner’s story following reports of how she ushered her class to safety.
“My initial reaction was . . . your kids need to get out of here. This is not a safe classroom anymore. You need to get them out of here, and then you need to go find help for yourself,” she recalled. “I just wanted to get my babies out of there.”
Earlier this month, Virginia prosecutors announced that the 6-yearold shooter will not face charges, though his family could still be held responsible.