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RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia teacher who was critically injured when she was shot by a 6-year-old student in Newport News is showing signs of improvement as authorities struggle to understand how a child so young could be involved in a school shooting, the city’s mayor said Saturday.
Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones said the condition of the teacher, a woman in her 30s, is “trending in a positive direction” as she remains hospitalized.
The boy shot and wounded the teacher in a first-grade classroom on Friday at Richneck Elementary School, according to authorities. Police Chief Steve Drew said the shooting was not accidental and was part of an altercation but didn’t elaborate further. No students were injured.
Jones declined to release additional details Saturday about what led to the altercation, citing the ongoing police investigation. He also would not comment on how the boy got access to the gun or who owns the weapon.
“This is a red flag for the country,” Jones said.
“I do think that after this event, there is going to be a nationwide discussion on how these sorts of things can be prevented.”
Experts who study gun violence said the shooting represents an extremely rare occurrence of a young child bringing a gun into school and wounding a teacher.
“It’s very rare and it’s not something the legal system is really designed or positioned to deal with,” said researcher David Riedman, founder of a database that tracks U.S. school shootings dating back to 1970.
He said Saturday that he’s only aware of three other shootings caused by 6-year-old students in the khbrknews period he’s studied. Those include the fatal shooting of a fellow student in 2000 in Michigan and shootings that injured other students in 2011 in Texas and 2021 in…
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