The elementary school in Virginia where a six-year-old student shot his teacher reopened today over three weeks since the terrifying incident.
Richneck Elementary School in the city of Newport News welcomed students back to classes on Monday, almost a month after the shooting on January 6.
Students walked onto a campus surrounded by police cars, which school administrator Karen Lynch said were present to ‘assist with the transition.’
Administrators searched children’s lunches with handheld metal detectors and distributed see-through plastic backpacks. The school also installed new doors and ‘state-of-the-art’ metal detectors at entranceways.
Additionally, the school said it would limit visitors, including parents. If parents do want to walk their children to class, they will be required to present a photo ID and will be searched.
Social workers and therapists were made available for students, and the school provided returning first-graders with on-site therapy dogs. They also posted an Amazon Wishlist for concerned community members to donate school supplies to the returning students and faculty.
The victim, first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner, was finally discharged from the hospital. The single shot fired by her student went through the her hand and into her chest, critically injuring her. She is now continuing her recovery at home.
Zwerner’s classroom will remain closed on Monday. Her class will be taught in a new classroom.
The reopening of the school follows weeks of criticism from parents and staff members, who question how the tragedy was allowed to happen.
According to an attorney representing Zwerner, administrators at Richneck had been warned about the child three times before the shooting, but did not take any action due to being ‘paralyzed by apathy.’
‘On that day, over the course of a few hours, three different times — three times — school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at the school and was threatening people,’ Zwerner’s attorney Diane Toscano said. ‘But the administration could not be bothered.’
Toscano said Zwerner first reported the student at 11.15am after he threatened to beat up another student. The second report came from another teacher, who searched the shooter’s backpack herself.
When she told administrators that the boy may have taken the gun outside to recess, they declined to search him again. ‘The administrator downplayed the report from the teacher and the possibility of a gun, saying — and I quote — “Well, he has little pockets,”‘ Toscano said.
The third report came after 1pm, when another student said the shooter showed him the gun and threatened to shoot him if he told anybody. Toscano says the teacher that made the third report was told to ‘wait the situation out’ because the school day was almost over.
Less than an hour later, the child used the gun to fire one shot at Zwerner. Toscano also said Zwerner plans to sue the school district.
Both Principal Briana Foster Newton and Vice Principal Ebony Parker resigned after the shooting. Superintendent George Parker was also fired after a 5-1 vote in favor of his removal by the school board.
Karen Lynch, who has worked for the district for 17 years, was appointed the ‘special assignment’ administrator for Richneck Elementary School after the staffing shakeup.
In a statement released almost two weeks after the shooting, the child’s family said the gun was ‘secured.’ An attorney for the family later confirmed that the weapon was locked in a safe kept on a shelf over six feet off the ground.
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