FILE - Signs stand outside Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., Jan. 25, 2023. A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school has been charged with felony child neglect more than a year afterA special grand jury in Newport News found that Ebony Parker showed a reckless disregard for the lives of Richneck Elementary School students on Jan. 6, 2023, according to indictments unsealed Tuesday.
Newport News police have said the student who shot Zwerner retrieved his mother's handgun from atop a dresser at home and brought the weapon to school concealed in a backpack. When concerns were raised that the child may have transferred the gun from his backpack to his pocket, Parker said his “pockets were too small to hold a handgun and did nothing,” the lawsuit states.
Parker and the lawsuit's other defendants, which include a former superintendent and the Newport News school board, have tried to block Zwerner's lawsuit. Howard Gwynn, the commonwealth’s attorney in Newport News, said in April 2023 that he had petitioned a special grand jury to probe if any “security failures” contributed to the shooting. Gwynn wrote that an investigation could also lead to recommendations “in the hopes that such a situation never occurs again.”