New Grand Jury evidence from Richneck Elementary school shooting
6-year-old student attempted to shoot his teacher a second time but the gun jammed. This happened as police were unable to enter the school due to a broken door buzzer.
The Virginia Pilot has released the full report from the Special Grand Jury that met to evaluate charges against school officials at Richneck Elementary in Newport News, VA. This document provides new details about what happened at the school leading up to a 6-year-old student intentionally shooting his teacher inside a classroom.
School officials should pay attention to this report because it highlights some of the same problems with procedures and physical security that have hampered the response to other school shootings.
His teacher, Ms. Abby Zwerner, was critically wounded by the first gunshot. If the 6-year-old fired a second shot at close range, it is very likely that she wouldn’t have survived this attack.
Findings and Implications for School Security
The following items are the findings that I believe are important for school officials to consider.
Finding 1: 6-year-old attempted to fire a second shot at his teacher from less than 6-feet away but the gun jammed after he fired the first round
It’s hard to imagine that a 6-year-old has the intent to commit murder. By attempting to fire a second shot, it is clear that he was deliberately trying to kill his teacher.
Due to limited resources, many school districts focus threat assessment and school shooting prevention programs on high schools. It’s important to consider that elementary school students can plan and commit school shootings.
Finding 2: There were seven unfired rounds in the magazine and 15 other students in the classroom at the time of the shooting
This shooting was not stopped by security plans or procedures at the schools.
His gun jamming was luck and it’s impossible to know what else was going to happen inside the classroom with the remaining 7 bullets.
School security and student safety shouldn’t depend on good luck.
Finding 3: Following the active shooter 'lockdown’ procedures, the principal and assistant principal closed the doors to their offices after a shot was fired
If everyone follows lockdown procedures and hides inside a locked room, this means that the adults who could detain the shooter and provide medical assistance will be hiding under a desk instead of addressing the emergency.
What should visitors at the school do during a lockdown? The report highlights that when the administrators when into their offices to lockdown, they left a crying student and another student’s grandmother in the reception area.
Finding 4: When police arrived at the school, they were unable to enter the building because of a “broken door buzzer system”
When everyone locks down inside a school, who is responsible for letting police inside?
At the Covenant School in Nashville, police were unable to get into the building until an officer found the keys to unlock the front door. A detective who entered through the other end of the building was unable to get to the shooter because of a locked hallway door inside the building.
During a swatting hoax, police officers in Michigan rammed their police car through the front doors of a school because it was locked.
If a shooter is already inside the school, locking exterior doors is useless (because the shooter is inside) and these locked doors can prevent or slow police from entering.
Locked doors also prevent students with access or functional needs from getting to safety. A student in a wheelchair can’t open many types of locked doors.
School officials should take a hard look at if locked doors are helpful or inhibit the response during the most likely circumstances for a shooting at a school.
Finding 5: Door buzzer didn’t work for several weeks
Recurring theme is lack of maintenance at schools and this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone because school districts across the country are facing budget deficits.
When basic maintenance is being overlooked, this prompts a question about large security purchases. After the school shooting, Newport News schools entered a multi-million dollar contract for ‘smart’ metal detectors. The vendor is now facing federal investigations and class action lawsuits because the system does not reliably detect handguns and knives. The system purchased might not have detected the handgun on the day of the shooting.
What is the impact of multi-million-dollar security tech purchases on regular maintenance requirements at a school?
Finding 6: School had an SRO who was assigned to two different campuses, but the officer didn’t have a work phone and there was no posted number for him to be reached
If a student is reported to have a gun, the most appropriate person to deal with that situation is a trained police officer. If that officer can’t be reached by school staff during an emergency, what is the purpose of having an SRO?
DOJ report on Uvalde found that school police officers rarely visited Robb Elementary, and school staff did know their names or have their contact information.
Because the school police officers were rarely inside Robb Elementary, they didn’t know basic information like where to find keys or the school schedule (e.g., they thought students were at lunch and not inside their classrooms when the shooting was happening).
Finding 7: On the day of the shooting, the assistant principal was told multiple times the student had a gun and searched the boy's backpack. Principal didn't search the student's clothing because “he has little pockets”
Did the assistant principal have any formal training in how to search a student?
A problem at schools is staff who are assigned to carry out security tasks like entry screening or student searches may not have formal training for 1) how to find a gun or 2) what to do if they find a weapon. I call this “The Matrix Problem” and most elements of lead to failures.
Finding 8: School did not send an emergency alert message to parents until the evening (exact time not specified in report), hours after the shooting at 2pm
If the school officials who are at the center of a crisis are also the primary staff who send emergency alerts, will they be able to send messages during an emergency?
Schools need to have a backup system and plan for staff who are not directly involved in an emergency situation to be able to send messages to parents. If schools have internal email lists, notification software, or private online forums, these backup staff members need to have access to the system.
Background of the Richneck Elementary shooting
If you don’t remember the details of this incident, I wrote a nationally syndicated article for The Conversation about it that day.
How rare is it to have a school shooter this young?
This is the 17th shooting involving a student under the age of 10 at a school since 1970 – the first year for which my database keeps track. Most of these shootings were not intentional. But in 1975, a 9-year-old student at the Pitcher School in Detroit was in a fight with a 13-year-old, left campus, got a rifle from his house and came back to the school and shot the student in the head, killing him.
In 2000, a 6-year-old boy fatally shot his 6-year-old classmate, Kayla Rolland, in their classroom at Buell Elementary School in Michigan while their teacher lined up other students in the hallway. The shooting followed a dispute on the playground.
Consequences
Based on the evidence, a grand jury indicted assistant principal Ebony J. Parker on eight counts of felony child neglect for failing to act on credible warnings the student had a gun.
These charges come just two days after the parents of the Oxford, MI school shooter were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison for manslaughter after they left a gun accessible in their home.
Both of these cases serve as a warning that the judicial system has the tools to hold adults accountable for the actions of children if those adults don’t take appropriate steps to prevent a school shooting.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio the day after the Perry High shooting.