Add The New York Post on Google 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 Parker about whether Zwerner expressed concerns about the student’s behavior that day, Parker choked up.
“No, Ms. Zwerner never came to me saying she feared that the student had a weapon or that she felt unsafe. She didn’t say that to me,” Parker said, holding back tears.
Just before that, Parker said Zwerner did come to her that day saying the student “is being extremely defiant today and she said, ‘If he hits me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.'” But the comments didn’t prompt any further action from Parker, she said.
Parker is facing eight counts of child neglect for each of the bullets that were in the 9mm handgun the child brought into school.
Zwerner told the jury Tuesday that just three days earlier, the boy had chucked her cell phone on the floor, cracking the screen and he wasn’t in school the next day.
And another first-grade teacher, Jennifer West, told jurors a student, R.R., came to her after spending recess with the shooter, reporting to her he had a gun.
West testified that after the fire rang out, Zwerner’s students fled into West’s classroom and West proceeded to go into lockdown as kids screamed and cried.
During the lock-down, R.R. kept repeating to West, “I tried to keep you safe. I told you,” she recalled.
The second day of trial Wednesday got off to a rocky start after both Parker’s defense team and prosecutors called for a mistrial based on the fact that two jurors sent questions out to the court — which suggested they were already beginning to formulate opinions about the case despite the fact that deliberations hadn’t begun.
But Judge Rebecca Robinson denied the request, saying neither of the two jurors did anything that would have prejudiced Parker from getting a fair trial.
Zwerner last year won a $10 million judgment against Parker at a civil trial where she testified she thought she “died” and was going “to heaven” after the shooting that left fragments of the bullet in her body to this day.
Parker has pleaded not guilty. The criminal trial is slated to wrap by the end of the week.
The boy’s mom, Deja Taylor, is serving nearly four years in prison for child neglect and gun charges after the boy found the gun in her purse at home.
