A 6-year-old student shot and killed a teacher at an elementary school in Virginia on Friday after an altercation, police said. No students were injured in the incident at Richneck Elementary School, Newport News police said in a statement.
“This was not an accidental shooting,” Police Chief Steve Drew told reporters at an evening news conference.
The female teacher, who is in her 30s, suffered what he said was a life-threatening gunshot wound and was taken to the hospital, the superintendent said. The teacher was in stable condition Saturday, according to a Riverside Regional Medical Center spokesman.
The boy has been taken into custody, officials said. He said no one else was involved in the incident.
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“We’ve been in touch with our federal prosecutors and a number of other entities to help us best serve this young man,” Drew said.
The chief said a pistol was used in the altercation and he wanted to know where it came from.
Drew said the shooting took place in a classroom at the school.
“It’s not a situation where we have students or anyone else walking up and down the hall actively shooting,” Drew said.
A police spokesman said in a statement Saturday that Drew had met with the victim and her family and that she was improving. “As the investigation is still ongoing, we will not be releasing any further information at this time,” police said in a statement.
Mayor Philip Jones said the incident “broke my heart”.
“It’s a dark day for Newport News,” Jones said. “We will learn from it and we will come out stronger.”
School superintendent George Parker III said the incident happened in a first-grade classroom.
“Today our students had a lesson on gun violence,” Parker said.
“It’s horrible,” he added. “It’s something that should never have happened and I think we’re all appalled and we all understand we have a lot of work to do as a community to make sure something like this doesn’t happen.”
Parker said metal detectors are being used randomly throughout the school district. There is no school on Monday.