Child’s Chilling Words After Shooting Teacher Revealed (Video)

A newly released police body-camera video is revealing the disturbing moments immediately after a 6-year-old boy shot his first-grade teacher inside a Virginia elementary school.

The footage was recorded at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on Jan. 6, 2023, after teacher Abigail “Abby” Zwerner was shot by one of her students.

In the video, officers can be heard trying to determine where the gun was while the child, who was being restrained by another school employee, repeatedly curses and challenges those around him.

At one point, an officer asks where the weapon is.

“It’s over there,” the boy responds before using profanity.

The child later tells officers, “I don’t care if you call backup. I don’t care if I go to jail.”

The footage offers a startling new look at a shooting that made national headlines and eventually triggered criminal cases, a major civil lawsuit and intense scrutiny of how school officials responded to warnings earlier that day.

Zwerner was teaching her first-grade class when the boy fired a 9mm handgun. The bullet passed through her hand before striking her in the chest.

She survived but suffered serious injuries. The bullet remains lodged in her body because doctors have determined that attempting to remove it would be more dangerous than leaving it in place.

Zwerner later described believing she was dying immediately after being shot.

“I thought I was on my way to heaven or in heaven,” she testified. “But then it all got black.”

Despite her injuries, Zwerner helped get her students out of the classroom before receiving medical treatment. She ultimately left the teaching profession.

The newly released bodycam footage also captures the child apparently explaining how he obtained the firearm.

“My mom had that,” he tells officers. “I stole that from my mom.”

A school employee holding the boy tells police that there appeared to be gunshot residue on his hands.

The boy continues shouting and using profanity as officers secure the scene. His face is blurred in the publicly released footage because he was a young child at the time of the shooting.

The case raised particularly troubling questions because school employees had reported concerns about the child and a possible weapon before the shooting occurred.

Zwerner later sued former Richneck assistant principal Ebony Parker, arguing that Parker failed to act on repeated warnings that the student might have a gun.

In November 2025, a Virginia jury found Parker grossly negligent and awarded Zwerner $10 million in damages, plus interest.

The verdict represented one of the most significant legal consequences stemming from the shooting and centered on whether school administrators had sufficient warning to intervene before Zwerner was wounded.

Parker separately faced eight criminal counts of child neglect.

However, those charges were dismissed in May 2026 after a judge ruled that Parker’s alleged conduct did not constitute a crime under the Virginia law prosecutors had used to bring the case.

The bodycam footage had initially been sealed while Parker’s criminal proceedings were underway. A judge later allowed it to be released publicly while ordering that the child’s face remain obscured.

The child himself was not criminally prosecuted.

His mother, Deja Taylor, did face both state and federal charges following the shooting.

Taylor was sentenced in 2023 to two years in prison after pleading guilty to felony child neglect in Virginia. She also received a 21-month federal prison sentence in a separate firearms case stemming from her possession and purchase of the handgun later used in the shooting.

Federal investigators determined that Taylor had purchased the Taurus 9mm handgun in July 2022.

Years after the classroom shooting, the newly public footage is bringing renewed attention to the case — and to the chain of warnings, decisions and failures that preceded a first-grader bringing a loaded handgun into an elementary school classroom.

For Zwerner, the consequences remain permanent. She has endured multiple surgeries, left the profession she once pursued and continues to live with the bullet that struck her that January afternoon.