Virginia Judge Dismisses Charges Against Former School Administrator for Failing to Prevent a Shooting

A Virginia judge dismissed charges against a former school administrator accused of failing to act on several warnings that a student had a gun, which he used later that day to shoot his teacher.

On 21 May, Circuit Judge Rebecca Robinson rejected eight felony counts of child abuse and neglect against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. She was charged after a six-year-old student brought a gun to the school and used it to shoot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, at close range on 6 January 2023.

Zwerner was significantly injured in the shooting and has since left teaching. Parker resigned after the incident. Prosecutors later alleged that Parker had a responsibility to intervene and act on reports from staff members that the student might have a weapon in his possession. School policy designated Parker as the individual with sole authority to order a complete search of the student and her failure to do so constituted child abuse and neglect, the prosecutors claimed.

Judge Robinson, however, disagreed. She dismissed all eight charges against Parker on the fourth day of trial, stating from the bench that “the court is of the legal opinion that this is not a crime,” according to the Associated Press (AP).

Curtis Rogers, a defense attorney for Parker, did not immediately respond to Security Management’s request for comment on the dismissal. During the trial, The New York Times reported that Rogers argued that Zwerner and other school staff members in close contact with the student had the primary duty to prevent the shooting. They could have done so, Rogers claimed, by separating the student from the rest of the class, but they did not. “Based upon their actions, there was no crisis, there was no gun,” Rogers said.

The decision to charge Parker was novel and without precedent in Virginia. Judge Robinson dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning that prosecutors cannot try the case again.

Efforts to hold administrators and law enforcement officers criminally responsible for preventing school shootings have largely failed in the United States so far. Some civil complaints, however, have succeeded—including related to the Richneck shooting.

A Virginia jury awarded $10 million in damages on Thursday to former elementary school teacher Abby Zwerner, who was shot by a student in her classroom in January 2023. https://t.co/doKF1G38Zh

— Security Management (@SecMgmtMag) November 7, 2025

In November 2025, a jury awarded $10 million to Zwerner in a civil trial where Parker was the only defendant. Zwerner's attorneys Diane Toscano, Kevin Biniazan, and Jeffrey Breit said in a statement to Security Management at the time that the verdict was a “major step forward in Abby’s long road of healing.”

They added that the jury’s decision “confirms what we’ve said from the beginning—what happened inside Richneck Elementary was wrong and will never be tolerated.”

Prosecutors declined to charge the student who shot Zwerner, instead deciding to hold his mother accountable. She pled guilty to felony child neglect in December 2023 and was sentenced to two years in prison, in part for allowing her son to have access to her firearm which was used in the shooting.

Richneck Elementary also upgraded its security systems after the shooting, including installing weapons detection systems and adding security staff.

In a press release published on 7 January 2023, then Superintendent Dr. George Parker wrote that the school district would continue to review what transpired and learn from the experience.

“There are many concerns that we will need to unpack before we will be able to determine if any additional preventive measures would have impacted the probability of this incident occurring,” according to the press release. “In addition to assessing our established safety procedures, we will need the support of our community to significantly reduce the likelihood of a child or young adult gaining access to a weapon.”

For more resources on campus safety, revisit our series on School Security and Early Intervention, K-12 Physical Security, and the ASIS International School Security Standard.