NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — As 10 On Your Side told you last week, six students are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuits on behalf of their families. Each seeks $3 million in damages. A grandmother filed a seventh suit a few days ago. They are all demanding trials against the Newport News School Board and former school administrators.
Attorney Emily Brannon went over the widespread chaos after a six-year-old shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner. Many were told he might have a gun in the hours leading up to the shot going off, but no one called 911.
“Most of the people, and students and the school, thought it was an active-shooter situation because they had no unified communication from the front office,” Brannon said.
She told 10 On Your Side that when parents showed up, many were greeted by a homicide detective with Newport News Police. This person had a list of students, asking, “which one is yours,” without saying the students are safe.
“When those parents looked at the list and pointed to the child’s name, their child’s name had a special colored check mark next to it,” Brannon said. “These parents did not know that their child was alive.”
All the while, she said a school leader with a megaphone gave incorrect information on who was shot.
The lawsuits go over the six-year-old’s “history of violence at school,” known to all school staff. It said the child was removed from school during the previous year after assaulting a teacher.
He had other violent incidents the same year, transferred throughout different schools for his behavior. Even still, Brannon said the child is also a victim.
“The people who are put in place to protect him failed him too,” Brannon said.
They are really concerned about what he wanted to accomplish that day.
“And as we’ve heard, and again, this is a rumor, the gun actually jammed,” Brannon said. “So we don’t know what the intention was as far as after Abby. They associate school with trauma, and all of that could have been prevented with one phone call prior to the shooting itself.”
Last week, we heard from a grandmother who told 10 On Your Side that former Principal Briana Foster Newton locked her, a student and Abby Zwerner out of her office after the gunshot.
In our efforts to reach out to Newton, 10 On Your Side found out she no longer works with attorney Pamela Johnson-Branch. She moved to a firm in New York state. We have calls into the law firm listed for Newton in court documents.