Condition of Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old improving, mayor says | 24CA News

A Virginia trainer who was critically injured when she was was shot by a six-year-old pupil in Newport News, Va., is exhibiting indicators of enchancment as authorities wrestle to grasp how a baby so younger may very well be concerned in a faculty capturing, the town’s mayor mentioned Saturday.

Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones mentioned the situation of the trainer, a girl in her 30s, is “trending in a positive direction” as she stays hospitalized.

The boy shot and wounded the trainer in a first-grade classroom on Friday at Richneck Elementary School, in keeping with authorities. Police Chief Steve Drew mentioned the capturing was not unintended and was a part of an altercation however did not elaborate additional. No college students had been injured.

Jones declined to launch extra particulars on Saturday about what led to the altercation, citing the continued police investigation. He additionally wouldn’t touch upon how the boy received entry to the gun or who owns the weapon.

“This is a red flag for the country,” Jones mentioned.

“I do think that after this event, there is going to be a nationwide discussion on how these sorts of things can be prevented.”

Experts who examine gun violence mentioned the capturing represents a particularly uncommon incidence of a younger baby bringing a gun into college and wounding a trainer.

“It’s very rare and it’s not something the legal system is really designed or positioned to deal with,” mentioned researcher David Riedman, founding father of a database that tracks U.S. college shootings relationship again to 1970.

He mentioned on Saturday that he is conscious of solely three different shootings brought on by six-year-old college students within the time interval he is studied. Those embrace the deadly capturing of a fellow pupil in 2000 in Michigan and shootings that injured different college students in 2011 in Texas and 2021 in Mississippi.

Riedman mentioned he is aware of of just one different occasion of a pupil youthful than that inflicting gunfire at a faculty — when a five-year-old pupil introduced a gun to a Tennessee college in 2013 and by accident discharged it. No one was injured in that case.

Daniel W. Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who research gun violence, agreed {that a} six-year-old capturing a trainer in school is extraordinarily uncommon. But he mentioned his analysis exhibits that cases of younger kids accessing loaded weapons and capturing themselves or others unintentionally in properties or different settings are rising.

“A six-year-old gaining access to a loaded gun and shooting him/herself or someone else, sadly, is not so rare,” he mentioned in an e mail.

Shooting not an accident: police chief

In the Newport News case, Drew, the police chief, mentioned Friday that the capturing did not look like an accident and that it was remoted to the one sufferer. He mentioned the scholar and trainer had identified one another in a classroom setting.

“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew advised reporters.

He mentioned the boy had a handgun within the classroom, and investigators had been making an attempt to determine the place he obtained it.

Parents and college students had been reunited at a gymnasium, Newport News Public Schools mentioned through Facebook.

The police chief declined to debate what contact investigators have had with the boy’s dad and mom.

“We have been in contact with our commonwealth’s attorney [local prosecutor] and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man,” Drew mentioned.

Newport News is a metropolis of about 185,000 folks in southeastern Virginia identified for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s plane carriers and different U.S. navy vessels.

Richneck has about 550 college students who’re in kindergarten via Grade 5, in keeping with the Virginia Department of Education’s web site. School officers have already mentioned that there will probably be no lessons on the college on Monday.

“Today our students got a lesson in gun violence,” mentioned George Parker III, Newport News colleges superintendent. “And what guns can do to disrupt, not only an educational environment but also a family, a community.”

Virginia legislation doesn’t permit six-year-olds to be tried as adults.

In addition, a six-year-old is simply too younger to be dedicated to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if discovered responsible.

A juvenile choose would have authority, although, to revoke a father or mother’s custody and place a baby beneath the purview of the Department of Social Services.