The Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney says that there won’t be any crimes charges against the 6-year-old who shot his teacher back in January and left her seriously injured.
As we previously reported, The Jan. 6 shooting happened at Richneck Elementary School. In more recent news, the Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn said Wednesday that he does not believe the law supports charging a 6-year-old child with aggravated assault.
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“The general consensus [among experts across the country] is that a 6-year-old cannot form the requisite criminal intent to be guilty of an aggravated assault,” Gwynn said over the phone with 13News Now. “I think it is problematical to assume that a 6-year-old understands the criminal justice system enough to be competent to stand trial.”
But Gwynn said that he does not believe there is a legal basis to charge a child and that his office, after receiving the case in February from Newport News police, is spending their time focusing on others. “Our objective is not just to do something as quickly as possible,” Gwynn said. “Once we analyze all the facts, we will charge any person or persons that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime.”
As we previously reported, the assistant principal of Richneck Elementary School resigned weeks after the shooting of the first grade teacher Abigail Zwerner.
Dr. Ebony Parker resigned from her position at the school amid the allegations that school administrators ignored the concerns of Zwerner and other teachers regarding the six-year-old boy’s troubling behavior. According to the New York Post, Dr. Parker’s resignation was confirmed by district spokesperson Michelle Price and Zwerner’s lawyer Diana Toscano said in a statement that her client is filing a lawsuit against the school district.
RELATED:Assistant Principal Resigns From Virginia School Where Boy,6, Shot Teacher
As previously reported, several teachers including Zwerner expressed concerns about the boy’s disruptive and violent behavior in the classroom months prior to the shooting. In a group message, the teachers expressed how administration reportedly ignored those concerns despite the boy expressing sentiments of wanting to harm his teacher and preventing his classmates from leaving their classroom at one point.
It is unclear whether Dr. Parker was one of those administrators who turned down the teacher’s concerns and an anonymous administrator spoke with the outlet quesioning her resignation. “However, the forced resignation of one of the administrators from Richneck does not resolve the failure of the district as a whole to put procedures in place to prevent this from happening again,” they said in a statement.