Prosecutor will probe possible cover-up after 6-year-old shot Virginia teacher
Authorities said Thursday they will investigate possible efforts to obstruct the investigation into the shooting of a teacher by a 6-yearold student at Virginia’s Richneck Elementary School last year, focusing on what happened to key pieces of evidence in the case.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard E. Gwynn, the top prosecutor in Newport News, Va., said his office will probe why one of the shooter’s discipline files disappeared and the other had material removed from it.
The announcement comes after a special grand jury issued a scathing report Wednesday that found glaring security lapses that led to the shooting and recommended a criminal investigation of a high-ranking Newport News School District official over the missing evidence.
“The lapses in security were appalling and should not have happened,” Mr. Gwynn said at a news conference Thursday. “The thing that comes across loud and clear in the report is this was preventable. It should not have happened if folks had discharged their responsibility in an appropriate fashion.”
Mr. Gwynn spoke to reporters shortly after Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal of Richneck, made a brief court appearance Thursday on charges related to her handling of the Jan. 6, 2023, shooting of first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner by her student. Ms. Zwerner survived her wound.
Ms. Parker, 39, charged with felony child abuse, appeared before a Newport
News Circuit Court judge, who continued the first hearing in her case until May 17. Ms. Parker did not speak and her attorney declined to comment afterward.
The special grand jury indicted Ms. Parker in March on eight counts of child abuse in the incident, possibly the first time a school administrator has been criminally charged in a school shooting, experts said. The charges were unsealed this week.
The special grand jury called Ms. Parker’s handling of the shooting “shocking” and said she failed to act on multiple warnings from teachers and other staff that the boy had a gun on the day of the shooting.
The boy had brought his mother’s gun from home and opened fire on Ms. Zwerner as she taught a class near the end of the school day.
The report also documented a series of administrative, security and disciplinary failures by the school and its administrators that helped set the stage for the shooting, including the fact that the 6-year-old should have been attending a different school after a previous incident in which he choked a teacher in kindergarten.
The special grand jury wrote that police obtained a search warrant for the boy’s disciplinary files, but when investigators went to the school to get them, they were missing.
LaQuiche Parrott, the director of elementary school leadership for the district, eventually returned one of the files, but the special grand jury said it was missing all of its disciplinary records, including documentation about the choking incident involving the shooter in kindergarten. The other file was never located and remains missing.
Ms. Parrott told the special grand jury she could not recall how she got the disciplinary file, something the special grand jury called “highly suspicious” and questioned whether she might be engaging in a coverup. The special grand jury recommended Parrott be investigated for obstruction of justice.
Ms. Zwerner’s attorneys held a news conference Thursday, praising the work of the special grand jury. Ms. Zwerner has sued school and school district officials for $40 million.
“Serious questions need to be answered by the school board about the culture they oversaw of being loose with disciplinary records,” said Diane Toscano, an attorney for Ms. Zwerner. “It put our teachers and students in danger.”
Deja Taylor, the mother of the 6-year-old boy, was sentenced in November to 21 months in prison for federal convictions related to the weapon used in the shooting. A month later, in state court, she was sentenced to two years behind bars in Virginia after pleading guilty to a felony count of child neglect.
The Newport News School District issued a statement Thursday in response to the special grand jury’s report thanking the special grand jury for its work.
“We have implemented a number of positive changes since this incident and will continue to do so in the future,” the statement said. “Safety of students and staff remain a top priority for the School Board.”