Virginia boy, 6, who shot teacher faced NO charges and spent 227 days in psychiatric care

From the Newshound archive · first published 7 October 2026 · last updated 9 October 2026.

Bodycam footage from January 2023, unsealed only recently, shows six-year-old JT cursing at officers and daring them to fight him in the moments after he shot his teacher Abby Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. Zwerner, then 25, was shot in the chest in front of 16 first-graders, required six surgeries, and won a $10m lawsuit after a jury found that warnings about the boy having a gun had been ignored. JT was not criminally charged; instead he spent 227 days in inpatient psychiatric care. His mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced to nearly two years on child neglect and federal gun charges.

JT told officers 'both y'all want a f****'piece of me, b'*h' and acknowledged on camera that he had taken the 9mm Taurus from his mother's purse that morning.

Reading specialist Amy Kovac, who had restrained JT, told officers it was his first week at school without his mother accompanying him.

Zwerner, whose hand sustained permanent damage, has left the teaching profession and is now working as a licensed cosmetologist.