A 6-year-old who shot his first-grade teacher in the chest then hurled obscenities and jail threats at staff and officers on bodycam, after school leaders brushed off repeated warnings that day.
On Jan. 6, 2023, first-grader J.T. pulled a 9 mm Taurus handgun from his jacket pocket during afternoon reading class at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, and fired a single round from about 10 feet away. The shot struck teacher Abby Zwerner in the hand and chest in front of 16 students.
Reading specialist Amy Kovac rushed in, held the boy in a bear hug, and called 911 after seeing blood on Zwerner. Police recovered the gun 15 to 20 feet away. Three minutes of bodycam from Officer Brian Torrez, later introduced as a prosecution exhibit, captured what happened next.
New York Post reporting on the footage shows the child immediately turning foul and defiant toward the adults who stopped him.
An officer on the radio said, “We have the shooter.” Another asked how old he was and whether they had any small handcuffs. Torrez warned colleagues not to touch the boy’s hands because of gun residue.
J.T. was not subdued in spirit. He yelled at Kovac and the officers:
“Both y’all want a f, king piece of me, b, h?!”
He followed with “F, k you, b, h,” and later, “If you want a piece of me, come get it on, b, h. I don’t care if you call backup. I don’t care if I go to jail, b, h.” He also said he “stole that from my mom,” gesturing toward the gun, and flipped a middle finger. Kovac told him the language was not appropriate. He kept going.
Court documents state the boy had taken the gun from his mother’s purse that morning after climbing on her dresser, put it in his backpack, and brought it to school. Kovac later testified he punched her in the face hard enough to send her glasses flying.
Kovac told officers on the scene she had already flagged a threat. “I told the [assistant principal] that there was a threat earlier about it,” she said. She added that the 6-year-old was on a modified schedule, with his mother supposed to pick him up at 2:30, and that this was his first week without his mother coming to school with him.
National Review reported the pattern went deeper. In 2021 the same boy allegedly choked another teacher from behind until she could not breathe; a teaching assistant had to pull him off. Two days before the shooting he slammed and broke Zwerner’s cellphone and received a one-day suspension. On the day of the shooting itself, administrators were warned three separate times that the boy had a gun and was threatening people. Those alerts were dismissed.
Diana Toscano, Zwerner’s lawyer, stated: “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 school and was threatening people. But the administration could not be bothered.” A teacher who had been choked earlier told the Associated Press she never felt safe again because leaders had failed to protect her the first time.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker, then 39, was indicted by a grand jury on eight child-abuse counts, including reckless disregard for human life, tied to the events before the shooting. Washington Examiner coverage detailed the March charges after records were unsealed.
Prosecutors later introduced the bodycam at Parker’s trial in May. All eight felony child-neglect counts were dismissed days later, before the defense put on a case. Zwerner’s separate civil suit against Parker went the other way. The civil trial ended in November 2025 with a $10 million award to the wounded teacher.
J.T.’s mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, then 29, was sent to state prison for child neglect. She also served federal time in part for lying about drug use on the firearm background-check form when she bought the gun. She was released in February. The boy, now around 9 or 10, lives in Newport News in the custody of his great-grandfather.
Zwerner was severely injured. The classroom of 16 first-graders watched a classmate shoot their teacher, then watched adults scramble while the shooter kept cursing and daring them to “come get it.” School leaders had been told, repeatedly, that the gun and the threats were real. They did not act in time. A jury later put a $10 million price on that failure. Parents who leave loaded guns where small children can climb up and take them, and administrators who treat clear warnings as nuisances, own the results when the round finally goes off.
When a first-grader can fire a round into a teacher’s chest and then sneer that he does not care about jail, every adult who ignored the earlier alarms has already answered for the culture they built.
