Ebony Parker Found Grossly Negligent As Jury Awards Abby Zwerner $10 Million In Newport News School Shooting Case

A former assistant principal in Newport News was found grossly negligent for ignoring repeated warnings that a six-year-old boy had a gun at school, jurors concluded on Thursday, and that omission caused the 2023 shooting of first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner. A jury of seven deliberated for six hours over two days, and awarded $10 million in damages, plus interest, to Zwerner for the physical and psychological injuries she suffers from almost two years after being shot by one of her students.

On January 6, 2023, Zwerner was teaching at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News when one of her first-grade students shot her, causing her to shatter her left hand and then putting a bullet in her chest. The 25-year-old teacher survived, but continues to have a bullet lodged in her body, the near-complete loss of function in her hand, and long-term, severe PTSD symptoms. During the civil trial, she said she was unable to open a bottle cap or even a bag of chips on her own. “I thought I was dying. I thought I had died,” Zwerner said, describing her reaction after collapsing on the floor of her classroom. “The injuries that I sustained have made it so that I can no longer do a lot of things… there’s also a distance now, a numbness I can’t describe.”

The civil trial focused not on the boy, who was too young to be charged under Virginia law, but on the then–assistant principal Ebony Parker, who Zwerner and her lawyers alleged had disregarded school employees’ increasingly urgent reports on the day of the shooting. Witnesses testified that Parker had received multiple children’s statements that the boy had a gun in his backpack. Reading specialist Amy Kovac said that she told Parker twice and even searched the student’s backpack during recess, but found no gun. She continued to raise the alarm as students told her the boy had gone to the bathroom and later said he may have put something in his pocket. Zwerner testified that she received a text from Kovac telling her the child “placed something in his pocket, possibly a gun,” and believed she was following up with proper notifications. Despite this, no search was made of the student, and no wider school safety measures were put in place before the boy fired into the school that afternoon.

The defense tried to argue that the shooting was unforeseeable and that Parker’s choices, while perhaps negligent, did not rise to the level of gross negligence. Lawyers for the school system frequently referenced “hindsight bias,” asking jurors to recognize that no employee in the building felt the school was at risk that day. Judge Matthew Hoffman had already dismissed the motion for summary judgment, however, having ruled that Zwerner had presented enough evidence for a jury to decide whether Parker owed a duty of care, grossly breached that duty, and caused the harm at issue. In the end, that framing carried the day.

The legal question of who will pay, though, is not yet resolved. While it is normal for judgments against school employees to be paid by the Virginia Risk Sharing Association (VRSA), the state’s insurance pool into which all public entities in Virginia, including the Newport News School Board, pay, Parker’s conduct may keep VRSA from having to cover the claim. Parker is facing eight felony counts of child abuse and neglect, each count for one of the rounds of ammunition chambered in the gun that day. That criminal case, stemming from the same incident, is set to begin in late November.

If a court or jury finds Parker guilty of a crime related to the shooting, VRSA could use that as a basis to avoid coverage, as it could argue Parker acted outside the scope of her employment in committing criminal offenses. Legal experts say courts sometimes view an employee’s criminal breach as so breaking the employment relationship that insurance doesn’t apply. But VRSA may also face large-scale public and institutional pressure to cover Zwerner’s claim regardless of the available defenses, both for reputational reasons and because it paid claims after a previous gun incident at Richneck Elementary. Experts who believe a coverage challenge is legally tenable also say VRSA may not want to publicly risk refusing to pay a severely injured teacher.

The boy shot Zwerner is now living with relatives and enrolled in a new school. His mother, Deja Taylor, pled guilty to state child neglect and federal firearm offenses, and is now serving a combined sentence of just under four years in prison and probation. Both Zwerner and Parker resigned from the Newport News school system after the shooting.