Richmond, Va. : The US primary school where a six-year-old child shot a teacher on Friday is to remain closed all week.
In a statement, the Virginia school said this was to give its students and families "time to heal".
According to fellow teachers and city officials, the Virginia teacher, Abby Zwerner, 25 who was shot by a 6-year-old student is known as a hard-working educator who is devoted to her students and enthusiastic about the profession that runs in her family.
Police said Zwerner had life-threatening injuries shortly after the shooting, but she has since improved and is listed in stable condition at a local hospital.
Eley and other city officials met with teachers and the principal at the school on Friday before heading to the hospital to meet with members of Zwerner's family, including several aunts who are also teachers.
"The family was all educators, and she expressed excitement about the job," said Eley, who was recently elected to the Newport News City Council.
“The custodians and other teachers spoke about how she’s a good teammate, she’s a team player, she loves her children, she’s just an all-around good teacher.”
Zwerner attended James Madison University, graduating in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Liberal Studies and minors in Elementary Education and Music. She graduated from JMU’s College of Education in 2020 with a master’s degree in Education.
Police Chief Steve Drew said the boy shot and wounded the teacher with a shotgun in the first class. He was then taken into custody. Drew said the shooting was not random and was part of an altercation. No students were injured. Police declined to describe what led to the altercation or any other details of what happened in the classroom, citing an ongoing investigation. They also declined to say how the boy got the gun or who owned it.
Virginia law does not allow a 6-year-old child to be tried as an adult. In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be detained by the Juvenile Justice Department if convicted.
However, a juvenile judge will have the power to revoke the parent's guardianship and place the child in the care of the Department of Social Services.
Mayor Phillip Jones did not say where the boy was being held.
Experts who study gun violence say a shooting is extremely rare when a child brings a gun to school and injures a teacher.
Researcher David Riedman, who has founded a database that has tracked school shootings in the US since 1970, said: "This is very rare and not a problem the legal system is really designed to be. or arrange to deal.
He said on Saturday he was only aware of three other shootings committed by the 6-year-old while he was in school. These include the 2000 shooting of a classmate in Michigan and the shootings that injured other students in 2011 in Texas and 2021 in Mississippi.
Riedman said he only knows of one other case of a younger student who caused a school shooting in which a 5-year-old student brought a gun to a Tennessee school in 2013. and accidentally removed it. No one was injured in this incident.
Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia, known for its shipyard, which builds the nation's aircraft carriers and other ships of the United States Navy. Richneck has about 550 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education website. Jones said there will be no classes at the school on Mondays and Tuesdays.
-BBC/Ap