A Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student spoke publicly for the first time this week and described the moment she thought she was dead.
In an interview with the “Today” show that aired Tuesday, first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner described the terrifying seconds before her student shot her in January.
“There are some things I’ll never forget. And I’ll never forget the look on his face when he pointed the gun at me,” she said of the incident at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. “It’s something I will never forget. It changed me. It has changed my life.”
Zwerner told “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie that she began to realize she had only survived the shooting because she held her hand out to the child, meaning the bullet passed through her hand before hitting her chest.
What happened next is still “fuzzy,” Zwerner said, but she remembers the kids leaving the classroom and going to the school office when she started to lose consciousness, not realizing her lungs had collapsed and she was incapacitated. to breathe.
“I remember I went to work and I passed out,” he said. “I thought I was dead.”
The circumstances surrounding the shooting gained national attention, with gun control advocates pointing to several failures that led to Zwerner’s death. Police have confirmed the pistol the boy used belonged to his mother, who obtained it legally. It’s unclear how the boy gained access to the gun, but Virginia has no laws requiring firearms to be stored in a certain way. His parents said the pistol was secured.
Some teachers are also concerned about the child’s harmful behavior with the school administrator, and warned him that he might have a gun on someone today, but the school failed to find and take it from him.
Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, told “Today” she plans to file a lawsuit on behalf of her client in the coming weeks.
“I can say that there was a failure on many levels in this case, and there were adults in positions of authority who could have prevented this tragedy from happening and they didn’t,” Toscano said.
Newport News prosecutors said earlier this month that they would not prosecute the boy.
The boy’s parents supported Zwerner and praised how he handled the situation.
“Take care of your son’s teacher and we pray for his healing after this unimaginable tragedy as he selflessly served his son and the children at the school,” the parents said in January.