Police: 6-year-old shoots teacher in Virginia classroom - The Associated Press

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A 6-year-old pupil changeable and wounded a teacher astatine his schoolhouse successful Virginia during an altercation wrong a first-grade schoolroom Friday, constabulary and schoolhouse officials successful the metropolis of Newport News said.

Experts said a schoolhouse shooting involving a 6-year-old is highly rare, though not unheard of, portion Virginia instrumentality limits the ways successful which a kid that property tin beryllium punished for specified a crime.

No students were injured successful the shooting astatine Richneck Elementary School, constabulary said. The teacher — a pistillate successful her 30s — suffered life-threatening injuries. Her information had improved somewhat by precocious afternoon, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said.

“We did not person a concern wherever idiosyncratic was going astir the schoolhouse shooting,” Drew told reporters, aboriginal adding that the gunshot was not an accident.

Drew said the pupil and teacher had known each different successful a schoolroom setting.

He said the lad had a handgun successful the classroom, and investigators were trying to fig retired wherever helium obtained it. The constabulary main did not supply further details astir the shooting, the altercation oregon what happened wrong the school.

Joselin Glover, whose lad is successful 4th grade, told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper she got a substance from the schoolhouse stating that 1 idiosyncratic was changeable and different was successful custody.

“My bosom stopped,” she said. “I was freaking out, precise nervous. Just wondering if that 1 idiosyncratic was my son.”

Carlos, her 9-year-old, was astatine recess. But helium said helium and his classmates were soon holed up successful the backmost of a classroom.

“Most of the full people was crying,” Carlos told the newspaper.

Parents and students were reunited astatine a gymnasium door, Newport News Public Schools said via Facebook.

The constabulary main did not specifically code questions astir whether authorities were successful interaction with the boy’s parents, but said members of the constabulary section were handling that investigation.

“We person been successful interaction with our commonwealth’s lawyer (local prosecutor) and immoderate different entities to assistance america champion get services to this young man,” Drew said.

Newport News is simply a metropolis of astir 185,000 radical successful southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s craft carriers and different U.S. Navy vessels.

Richneck has astir 550 students who are successful kindergarten done 5th grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website. School officials person already said that determination volition beryllium nary classes astatine the schoolhouse connected Monday.

“Today our students got a acquisition successful weapon violence,” said George Parker III, Newport News schools superintendent, “and what guns tin bash to disrupt, not lone an acquisition environment, but besides a family, a community.”

Virginia instrumentality does not let 6-year-olds to beryllium tried arsenic adults.

In addition, a 6-year-old is excessively young to beryllium committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if recovered guilty.

A juvenile justice would person authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and spot a kid nether the purview of the Department of Social Services.

A schoolhouse shooting involving a 6-year-old is highly rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist astatine Boston’s Northeastern University.

Fox told The Associated Press Friday evening that helium could deliberation of 1 erstwhile incidental involving a kid that age.

In 2000, a 6-year-old lad fired a slug from a .32-caliber weapon wrong Buell Elementary adjacent Flint, Michigan, 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland successful the neck, according to an AP nonfiction from the time. She died a half-hour later.

Fox analyzed schoolhouse shooting information sets going backmost to 1970 from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which is located astatine the Naval Postgraduate School successful Monterey, California. He said the information listed schoolhouse shootings involving children ages 7, 8, 9 and older, but not 6-year-olds.

Another origin that stands retired astir the Virginia shooting is that it occurred successful a classroom, Fox said. Many hap extracurricular a schoolhouse gathering wherever students are unsupervised.

From 2010 done 2021, determination were much than 800 school-related shootings successful K-12 schools that progressive 1,149 victims. Thirty percent of those occurred successful the schoolhouse building, said Fox, who published the 2010 book, “Violence and Security connected Campus: From Preschool Through College.”

“There are students who killed teachers, much typically precocious schoolhouse students,” Fox said. “I don’t cognize of different cases wherever a 6-year-old changeable a teacher.”

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Barakat reported from Falls Church, Virginia.