Published: 1:18am, 31 Oct 2025Updated: 1:33am, 31 Oct 2025
A former Virginia teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student in her classroom in 2023 testified on Thursday that she thought she had died that day.
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Abby Zwerner testified in her US$40 million lawsuit filed against a former assistant principal who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the student had a gun.
Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.
Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.
“I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to Heaven or in Heaven,” Zwerner testified.
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“But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”
