NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school showed a “shocking” lack of response to multiple warnings that a 6-year-old had a gun in the hours before he shot his teacher, according to a grand jury report released Wednesday.
“The child was not searched. The child was not removed from class. The police or SRO was not called,” the report said, referring to a school resource officer.
The report was released a day after the former administrator, Ebony Parker, was charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for “each of the eight bullets that endangered all the students” in teacher Abby Zwerner's classroom, Newport News prosecutors said in a statement.
The 31-page report offers fresh details about the January 2023 shooting and serious wounding of Zwerner, which occurred after the boy brought his mother's gun to school in a backpack. And it catalogues missed opportunities to provide more resources to the often-misbehaving student, as well as tools Parker could have used to remove him from class, such as alternative school, in the months before the shooting.
“Dr. Parker’s lack of response and initiative given the seriousness of the information she had received on Jan. 6, 2023 is shocking,” the grand jury report said. “This is only heightened by the fact that she was well aware of the child’s past disciplinary issues and had been involved in the decisions to address his behavior” in both the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years.
The report also provides a granular, often minute-by-minute accounting of each time the special grand jury said Parker disregarded concerns. For instance, one teacher spoke of a “visibly scared and shaking" child who reported seeing bullets from the boy's 9mm handgun during recess.
A counselor, Rolonzo Rawles, then told Parker the same story, according to the report.
“Mr. Rawls, now the third person and fourth time this message had been relayed, went back to Dr. Parker and communicated that the child either had a gun or ammunition at least,” it said.
Parker refused to let the boy be searched after his backpack was searched, the report said, describing the child sitting as his desk with “a loaded firearm tucked into his jacket.”
“Ms. Zwerner was then left alone with 16 first-grade students in her class that day, of which one had been reported by three different students over the course of two hours to have a firearm,” it added.
In the weeks after the shooting, Newport News Public Schools announced that Parker had resigned.
Parker, 39, posted $4,000 in secured bail Wednesday and did not yet have an attorney listed for her, the Newport News Circuit Court clerk's office said.
She and other school officials already face a $40 million negligence lawsuit from Zwerner, who accuses Parker and others of ignoring multiple warnings that the boy had a gun and was in a “violent mood” the day of the shooting.
Zwerner was sitting at a reading table in front of the class when the boy fired the gun, police said. The bullet struck Zwerner’s hand and then her chest, collapsing one of her lungs. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and has endured multiple surgeries as well as ongoing emotional trauma, according to her lawsuit.
Parker and the lawsuit’s other defendants, which include a former superintendent and the Newport News school board, have tried to block the lawsuit, arguing that Zwerner’s injuries fall under Virginia’s workers’ compensation law.
Those efforts have been unsuccessful so far, however, and a trial is scheduled for January.
Prosecutors said a year ago that they were investigating whether the “actions or omissions” of any school employees could lead to criminal charges.
Howard Gwynn, the commonwealth’s attorney in Newport News, said in April 2023 that he had petitioned a special grand jury to probe if any “security failures” contributed to the shooting. Gwynn wrote that an investigation could also lead to recommendations “in the hopes that such a situation never occurs again.”
Assistant principal ignored warnings that 6-year-old boy had gun before he shot teacher, report says
Assistant principal ignored warnings that 6-year-old boy had gun before he shot teacher, report says
FILE - Signs stand outside Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va., Jan. 25, 2023. A former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school has been indicted on eight felony counts of child neglect in the case of a 6-year-old boy who shot and wounded his first-grade teacher in Newport News, Virginia, last year, according to indictments unsealed Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Newport News Circuit Court. (AP Photo/Denise Lavoie, File)
BEIRUT (AP) — The European Union announced Thursday an aid package for Lebanon of 1 billion euros — about $1.06 billion — much of which will go to boost border control to halt the flow of asylum seekers and migrants from the small, crisis-wracked country across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus and Italy.
The deal follows other EU aid packages for countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania to fortify their borders. It comes against a backdrop of increasing hostility toward Syrian refugees in Lebanon and a major surge in irregular migration of Syrian refugees from Lebanon to Cyprus.
European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during a Beirut visit with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides that the aid distribution will start this year and last till 2027.
The bulk of the aid — 736 million euros — would go to support Syrian refugees “and other vulnerable groups” in Lebanon, while 200 million euros are meant to bolster Lebanese security services in enforcing border and migration control, according to figures provided by the Cypriot government.
An unspecified amount would go to Lebanese fishermen, to discourage them from selling their boats to smugglers.
Von der Leyen said the EU will also work on a “more structured approach to voluntary return" of Syrian refugees "in close cooperation with” the U.N. refugee agency. The bloc will continue to maintain “legal pathways” for resettlement of refugees in Europe, she said.
Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati praised the package, saying that “Lebanon’s security is security for European countries and vice versa,” and that an escalation of the crisis ”will not be limited to Lebanon but will extend to Europe."
Lebanon, which has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands more who are unregistered, the world's highest refugee population per capita.
Lebanese political officials have for years urged the international community to resettle the refugees in other countries or assist their return to Syria — voluntarily or not. Lebanese security forces have stepped up deportations of Syrians over the past year.
Tensions further flared after an official with the Christian nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed last month in what military officials said was a botched carjacking by a Syrian gang. The incident prompted outbreaks of anti-Syrian violence by vigilante groups.
Meanwhile, Cypriot authorities complain the island nation has been overwhelmed by irregular migration of Syrian asylum seekers, many of them coming on boats from Lebanon.
The UNHCR in Lebanon said it had verified 59 “actual or attempted” departures by boats carrying a total of 3,191 passengers from Lebanon between January and mid-April, compared to three documented boat movements carrying 54 passengers in the same period last year. Usually, few boats attempt the much more dangerous crossing in the winter. In all of 2023, UNHCR recorded 65 boat departures carrying 3,927 passengers.
Cyprus has taken a new approach to halting the flow of migrants. Last month, it suspended processing of Syrian asylum applications, and human rights groups accused the Cypriot coast guard of forcibly turning back five boats carrying about 500 asylum seekers coming from Lebanon. Cypriot officials have denied this.
Bassel al-Shayoukh, a Syrian refugee from Idlib living in Lebanon since 2014, said his brother and several cousins and nephews were on one of the boats turned back. Now he wants to make the journey himself.
“In the beginning I thought that in a year or two the war would be over in Syria,” he said, but it dragged on, while in Lebanon “every year ... the situation began to get worse.”
Shayoukh said he fears being beaten by vigilantes or deported to Syria after Lebanese authorities declined to renew his residency permit.
His 17-year-old nephew, who declined to give his name fearing for his safety, said the Cypriot coast guard started making waves to push the boat he was on away. “I was terrified... I don’t know how to swim,” he said. “I thought we were going to die.”
The people on the boats “stayed three days without food or water” before turning back to Lebanon, the teen added.
Back in Lebanon, they were detained by the army; those registered with UNHCR were released and the others deported.
Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese human rights lawyer who works on refugee and migrant cases, says Lebanese authorities are deliberately “turning a blind eye" to the surge in migration to "pressure the international community.”
The Lebanese army did not respond to a request for comment on their measures to combat smuggling.
Thursday's aid announcement comes ahead of the annual fundraising conference for the Syrian crisis in Brussels later this month. After 13 years of civil war, donor fatigue has set in while the world’s attention is occupied by the humanitarian fallout of more recent conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
The Cypriot president said Thursday was a “historic day” and called for European officials to go farther and declare some areas of Syria safe for return.
“The current situation is not sustainable for Lebanon. It is not sustainable for Cyprus, it is not sustainable for the European Union,” Christodoulides said.
But not all Lebanese officials are convinced the European aid would solve the problem.
Lebanese Forces party head Samir Geagea told The Associated Press earlier this week that European authorities are mainly concerned “that the refugees don’t go to Europe."
"For us the problem is that we cannot have our country drowning in illegal Syrian refugees,” Geagea said, urging for Syrians to be sent back to either government or opposition-held areas of the neighboring country.
But Shayoukh says he has nowhere to go.
The Damascus government wants him for opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said, while the Islamist group that now controls his hometown behaves "the same way as the regime’s intelligence services” in crushing dissidents.
Associated Press writer Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s global migration coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/migration
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, speaks during his meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, speaks during his meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, welcomes Cyprus' president Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen before their meeting at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen pose for photograph at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, right, welcomes Cyprus' president Nikos Christodoulides before their meeting at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, center, review an honor guard upon their arrival to meet with the Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, speaks during his meeting with Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, center, welcomes Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
