The six-year-old student who shot his teacher ‘Abigail (Abby) Zwerner’ in a Virginia school earlier this year boasted about the shooting saying, “I shot that b**** dead,” unsealed court documents reveal.
While restrained after the shooting, the boy admitted, “I did it” adding “I got my mom’s gun last night.”
Zwerner was hospitalized for nearly two weeks following the shooting and required several surgeries, she has since resigned from her teaching position at the school and has sued the school district for $40 million.
Abby Zwerner alleges school administrators shrugged off multiple warnings from staff and students who believed the boy had a gun and posed an imminent threat on the day of the shooting, and did so knowing the child “had a history of random violence.”
The 6-year-old will not be facing any criminal charges in the shooting. Instead, his mother, Deja Taylor, turned herself in and was charged.
The documents also state that the mother ‘Deja Taylor’ of the 6-year-old alleged to have shot Zwerner, told police after the shooting that she believed on the morning of the shooting “that her firearm was stored in her purse with the trigger lock in place,” and that her purse was placed on top of her bedroom dresser. The documents also say Taylor told police that she “keeps the key for the gunlock [sic] under her bedroom mattress.”
Taylor pleaded guilty in June to using marijuana while in possession of a firearm. Federal prosecutors claimed Taylor “knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement” when she legally purchased the gun and claimed she did not use marijuana. She is scheduled to be sentenced later this year.
She is facing felony child neglect and a misdemeanor for recklessly leaving a loaded firearm where a child could access it.
Taylor has expressed regret for the incident and has taken responsibility for her child’s actions.
“That is my son, so I am, as a parent, obviously, willing to take responsibility for him because he can’t take responsibility for himself,” Taylor said in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America in May.
Credit: ABC, GMA, Independent, Washington Post, NBC