Six year-old pupil shoots teacher in U.S. school
Quick Read
No students were injured in the shooting at Richneck Elementary School, police said. The teacher — a woman in her 30s — suffered life-threatening injuries.
Gun violence reached another shocking level in the United States Friday when a six-year-old pupil shot and wounded a teacher at his school in Newport Virginia.
The shooting came amid an altercation inside a first-grade classroom, police and school officials in the city of Newport News said.
Experts said a school shooting involving a six-year-old is extremely rare, although not unheard of, while Virginia law limits the ways in which a child that age can be punished for such a crime.
No students were injured in the shooting at Richneck Elementary School, police said.
The teacher — a woman in her 30s — suffered life-threatening injuries.
Her condition had improved somewhat by late afternoon, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew told reporters, later adding that the gunshot was not an accident.
Drew said the student and teacher had known each other in a classroom setting.
The police chief did not specifically address questions about whether authorities were in touch with the boy’s parents, but said members of the police department were handling that investigation.
“We have been in contact with our commonwealth’s attorney (local prosecutor) and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man,” Drew said.
Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s aircraft carriers and other U.S. Navy vessels.
Richneck has about 550 students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website.
School officials have already said that there will be no classes at the school on Monday.
“Today our students got a lesson in gun violence,” said George Parker III, Newport News schools superintendent, “and what guns can do to disrupt, not only an educational environment, but also a family, a community.”
Virginia law does not allow six-year-olds to be tried as adults.
Comments