Search warrant sheds new light on case of 6-year-old who shoot his teacher

NEWPORT NEWS — Shortly after a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6, a reading specialist was restraining him in the ensuing chaos.

“I shot that b**** dead,” the boy said, according to court documents. “I did it.”

The boy’s statements were contained in search warrant affidavits that were filed by a detective in Newport News Circuit Court on Jan. 12 but were recently unsealed.

Police interviewed the 25-year-old teacher, Abigail Zwerner, at the hospital the night of the shooting. She told police she was breaking her class into reading groups after recess when the first grader pulled a gun from his hoodie pocket and pointed it at her.

“What are you doing with that?” she asked.

The boy paused, then fired a single shot, striking Zwerner in the left hand and upper torso, according to the affidavits.

Students ran out of the classroom, as did the bleeding Zwerner. But a school “reading specialist” who had heard the gunshot, Amy Kovac, ran in.

Kovac saw the 6-year-old standing by his desk, with a loaded 9mm handgun on the floor nearby, the affidavit said. She grabbed him and held him in place until police arrived. After making the statements that he had shot Zwerner, the boy also told Kovac that he “got his mom’s gun last night,” the affidvavit said.

According to the affidavit, Kovac told detectives that two students in Zwerner’s class told her before the shooting that the 6-year-old had a gun in his book bag. “While the classroom went to recess, Ms. Kovac and a school administrator searched (the boy’s) book bag but did not find a gun,” the affidavit said.

In the interview at the hospital, the affidavit said, Zwerner told police the boy was subject to multiple disciplinary reports, to include “physical violence and threats of violence.”

On Jan. 23 detectives also interviewed a retired Newport News schoolteacher named Susan White.

White told detectives that in September 2021 — while the boy was in kindergarten — he walked up behind her while she was sitting in her chair. White told detectives the boy “placed both of his arms around her neck, pulling down, choking her to the point she could not breathe,” the affidavit said.

A teacher assistant witnessed the choking and “had to forcibly remove” the boy from the classroom, the affidavit said.

A Newport News Police detective, Aaron Thornton, wrote in the affidavit that “the incident Ms. White describes … is not found” in “limited school records” he got from Child Protective Services. He said he believes that “Ms. White’s incident and possibly others were not readily provided by Newport News Public Schools.”

WTKR News 3 on Monday first reported the unsealing of the search warrant documents and some of the information contained in the related affidavits.

Circuit Court Judge Gary Mills granted the search warrants, which gave the police access to the boy’s student file with Newport News Public Schools from September 2020 to January 2023. This includes “teacher and staff documentation of assaults, supervisor notes, disciplinary actions, counseling or guidance records,” among other things.

Police were also granted permission to search the boy’s book bag, which had black and white checkers, “images of sharks,” and the boy’s initials. Detectives seized a manila folder with the boy’s student’s records, a notebook belonging to Zwerner, another notebook paper from Jan. 4 and Jan. 6, and a Dell laptop.

They also seized the book bag, containing “miscellaneous school supplies,” including books, papers, a calculator, note cards, a bag of chips and a pair of black sneakers. The records provided by the Circuit Court this week, however, don’t show that police received any student records from the school administration building.