WARNING: The video in this story contains disturbing images and subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.

NEWPORT NEWS, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — Newly released body camera footage offers a disturbing new window into the 2023 shooting of an elementary school teacher by a six-year-old.

On January 6, 2023, a then-6-year-old pulled a handgun from his hoodie pocket during a reading class at Richneck Elementary School in Virginia and fired at teacher Abigail Zwerner, who suffered a collapsed lung and survived. 

The child (identified in court only as TJ), who had stolen his mother’s gun and brought it to school, was not charged, but placed in a healthcare facility for rehabilitation and now resides with his great-grandfather. His mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, was eventually sentenced to two years in prison for felony child neglect.

Zwerner went on to sue then-assistant principal Ebony Parker for gross negligence and was awarded $10 million in damages last year, though criminal charges against Parker were dismissed earlier this year.

The Virginian-Pilot published body camera footage from responding Officer Brian Torrez, which depicts the ensuing confrontation with the troubled boy.

🚨 A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Richneck Elementary, Jan 6, 2023.

Court unsealed Officer Brian Torrez’s bodycam Oct 6, 2026.

🎥 The Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press https://t.co/TPphaycltx

— Patriot (@_Patriot1776Q_) October 7, 2026

“Both y’all want a f***ing piece of me, b****?!” the child can be heard telling the police, as well as swearing at reading specialist Amy Kovac, who was restraining TJ in a bear hug.

As the personnel on the scene confirm the location of the gun (which TJ no longer had), at one point Kovac asks TJ if “anything hurt you” when he fired, and to inspect his hands, only to receive more cursing and hostility.

“If you want a piece of me, come get it on, b****,” he continues to rage. “I don’t care if you call backup. I don’t care if I go to jail, b****.”

The footage had been sealed following its use in Parker’s criminal trial, but was unsealed following a motion filed in June by the Pilot and the Daily Press.

During the civil trial, Zwerner maintained that Parker neglected to act despite multiple warnings that TJ was in possession of a gun, and even forbade staff from searching him. 

“I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven. But then it all got black and so I then thought I wasn’t going there,” Zwerner testified during the trial. “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.”

“Those choices that she made to treat Jan. 6, 2023, like any other day, even though a gun should change everything, is why we’re here,” her attorney Kevin Biniazan argued at the time. “A gun changes everything. You stop and you investigate. You get to the bottom of it to know whether that gun is real and on campus so you can deal with it. But that’s not what happened.”

Both have since resigned from Richneck Elementary, which US News & World Report ranks #816 out of 1,088 Virginia schools. “54% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 53% scored at or above that level for reading,” according to the report. “The student-teacher ratio is 19:1, which is worse than that of the district.”

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