School administrator admitted she didnt search 6-year-old who shot teacher Abby Zwerner after hearing he may have a gun

A Virginia school administrator admitted she didn’t search a 6-year-old boy after hearing he may have brought a gun to school and stashed it in his pockets the day he shot his first-grade teacher, Abby Zwerner, jurors learned Wednesday.Former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker — who is on trial for child neglect charges tied to the shooting — made the admission to a human resources investigator just three days after the student shot Zwerner on Jan.6, 2023.

The shocking admission was revealed in a video of Parker getting grilled by the internal investigator that was shown to a jury on Wednesday.Parker recounted to the investigator that she told school counselor Rolonzo Rawles that another teacher searched the child’s backpack and didn’t find a weapon on the day of the shooting.“He said, ‘Did you check their person?'” Parker recalled Rawles asking her in reference to the first-grader.“Oof.No, we didn’t,” Parker said she responded to Rawles, who testified that he had asked if he could search the child.She added that since it was 1:40 p.m.

and the student was on a modified schedule, his mom was coming to get him soon and they could do the search then.But the child shot Zwerner in her classroom in front of her other students before the boy’s mom and school officials were ever able to search him.The assistant principal is accused of failing to act on the warnings by Zwerner and reading specialist Amy Kovac about the child acting alarmingly and how he might have had a firearm.In fact, Kovac testified Tuesday that she went to Parker twice about the boy, the first time after two “shaken” girls told her they saw the gun and bullets in his bag and a second time after Zwerner texted Kovac that the boy’s hands were in his jacket pocket for the “entire time” at recess.“The weapon in discussion was now in his jacket pocket,” Kovac said she told Parker at the second meeting.When the investigator, Nina Farrish, pressed...