Teacher shot by 6-year-old student: ‘I thought I had died’

NEWPORT NEWS — Abby Zwerner’s last memory after being shot by her 6-year-old student at Richneck Elementary was thinking that she’d died.

“The last thing I remember at the school, I thought I was dying. I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” she said in court Thursday, her voice breaking. “Then it all got black. So, then I thought I wasn’t going there.”

“And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”

Her hour and 15 minutes of soft-spoken and sometimes halting testimony came on the third day of a $40 million civil lawsuit trial in Newport News Circuit Court. Zwerner is suing Ebony Parker, the school’s former assistant principal, for gross negligence.

Zwerner’