Teacher shot by 6-year-old with gun in US classroom: Police - Al Jazeera English

Police said the shooting was not an accident; investigators are moving to find wherever the kid got the weapon.

A six-year-old pupil changeable and wounded a teacher successful Virginia during an altercation wrong a first-grade classroom, constabulary and schoolhouse officials successful the metropolis of Newport News said.

No students were injured successful the shooting connected Friday astatine Richneck Elementary School, constabulary said. The teacher – a pistillate successful her 30s – suffered life-threatening injuries.

Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew told reporters her information had improved somewhat by precocious afternoon.

Police said the kid had a handgun successful the schoolroom and that they took that pupil into custody.

“We did not person a concern wherever idiosyncratic was going astir the schoolhouse shooting,” Drew told reporters. “We person a concern successful 1 peculiar determination wherever a gunshot was fired.”

The shooting was not an accident, helium said.

Investigators were trying to fig retired wherever the kid obtained the gun.

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.

The constabulary main did not supply further details astir the shooting, the altercation oregon what happened wrong the school.

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

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 US Navy vessels.

Richneck has astir 550 students who are successful kindergarten done to 5th people (10-11 years old), according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website.

Virginia instrumentality does not let six-year-olds to beryllium tried arsenic adults. In addition, a six-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 the 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 six-year-old is highly rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist astatine Boston’s Northeastern University.

Fox, who analysed schoolhouse shooting information sets going backmost to 1970 from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, said the information listed schoolhouse shootings involving children ages seven, eight, 9 and older, but not six-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.

In 2000, a six-year-old lad fired a slug from a .32-calibre weapon wrong Buell Elementary adjacent Flint, Michigan, striking different six-year-old, Kayla Rolland, successful the neck, according to an AP nonfiction from the time. She died a half-hour later.