Newly unsealed body camera video shows the moments after a 6-year-old shot his first-grade teacher, Abby Zwerner, at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, including the boy telling police the gun came from his mother.
Video:
A Newport News judge released the nearly three-minute video on October 6. It was recorded by Officer Brian Torrez, one of the first officers to reach Classroom 11 on January 6, 2023. The footage had been sealed because it shows a minor, and it was released on the condition that the child’s face be blurred.
By the time police arrived, Zwerner had already been shot through her hand and into her chest. She and her 16 students had fled the room, and she collapsed in the school office. Reading specialist Amy Kovac stayed behind, holding the boy in a bear hug and calling 911.
In the video, the boy curses repeatedly at Kovac and at the officers. At one point he says “[expletive] you” and flashes his middle finger at Kovac. “He is 6 years old,” Kovac tells officers as they try to understand what happened. Officers are also told the boy had been on a modified schedule and that this was his first week attending school without his mother coming with him.
When officers ask about the gun, the boy says his mother had it. The video ends with what sounds like a hit, followed by officers removing the child from the classroom. Kovac testified in May that the boy punched her and knocked her glasses off.
Prosecutors first showed the footage to jurors as their opening exhibit in the May criminal trial of former Richneck assistant principal Ebony Parker.
Zwerner’s attorneys said in a statement that the video “reflects just how serious the situation at Richneck had become.”
The case has already led to consequences for the adults involved. The boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to two years in state prison for felony child neglect and 21 months in federal prison on firearm-related charges. In 2025, a jury awarded Zwerner $10 million in a civil case against Parker, after hearing that staff members had repeatedly warned school leaders that the boy might have a gun that day.
Zwerner survived, but the bullet narrowly missed her heart and is still in her chest. She has had multiple surgeries and no longer teaches at Richneck. The boy now attends a different school.
