NEWPORT NEWS — Shortly after a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6, a reading specialist was restraining him in the ensuing chaos.
Students ran out of the classroom, as did the bleeding Zwerner. But a school “reading specialist” who had heard the gunshot, Amy Kovac, ran in.
“I shot that b**** dead,” the boy said, according to court documents. “I did it.”
Kovac saw the 6-year-old standing by his desk, with a loaded 9 mm handgun on the floor nearby, the affidavit said. She grabbed him and held him in place until police arrived. After making the statements that he had shot Zwerner, the boy also told Kovac that he “got his mom’s gun last night,” the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, Kovac told detectives that two students in Zwerner’s class told her before the shooting that the 6-year-old had a gun in his book bag. “While the classroom went to recess, Ms. Kovac and a school administrator searched (the boy’s) book bag but did not find a gun,” the affidavit said.
On Jan. 23 detectives also interviewed a retired Newport News schoolteacher named Susan White.
White told detectives that in September 2021, while the boy was in kindergarten, he walked up behind her while she was sitting in her chair. White told detectives the boy “placed both of his arms around her neck, pulling down, choking her to the point she could not breathe,” the affidavit said.
The boy, who recently turned 7, is not charged with a crime, given that Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn said he’s too young to have formed the criminal intent to be charged with it. He’s now in the custody of his great-grandfather, who said he’s thriving and attending school elsewhere.
The boy’s mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, pleaded guilty in Newport News federal court to a felony charge of having a firearm while also possessing marijuana and also to a felony charge of lying on a federal background check form when she bought the gun. She also has a guilty plea hearing scheduled for Circuit Court next week on a felony child neglect charge and a misdemeanor count of allowing a child access to a firearm.