Where Is Abby Zwerner Now? Inside Her Life Nearly 3 Years After an Elementary School Student Shot Her While Teaching By Christopher Rudolph

In January 2023, first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was shot in her classroom by a 6-year-old boy.

After surviving her wounds, Zwerner filed a lawsuit in April 2023, naming the school’s assistant principal, Ebony Parker, as a defendant. Zwerner stated that she suffered “physical pain and mental anguish” because of the incident.

At the time, her attorney, Diane Toscano, said in a statement, “Abby was shot by a six-year-old student, and she will never be the same. She has endured four surgeries and still has a bullet lodged inside her.”

Nearly three years later, in November 2025, Zwerner won the lawsuit and was awarded $10 million by the jury. While she has gone on to pursue a different passion outside the classroom, Zwerner has spoken about how the incident continues to impact her, both physically and emotionally.

So where is Abby Zwerner now? Here’s everything to know about the former schoolteacher.

Who is Abby Zwerner?

Zwerner is a former first-grade teacher who was shot in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va. She was 25 at the time of the shooting, per CBS News.

Zwerner loved teaching and recalled to Today the first time she walked into her classroom.

“It was amazing. It was the moment that you had been waiting for,” she said. “This is what I’ve been practicing. This is what I’ve studied. It’s finally here.”

Who was Abby Zwerner’s student?

The identity of the boy who shot Zwerner has not been disclosed because he is a minor.

During the trial, he was referred to as a 6-year-old male student of Zwerner’s at the school where she taught.

According to The New York Times, in the lawsuit, Zwerner said the boy had “a history of random violence” and had previously attacked teachers and other students.

Zwerner also recalled telling Parker on the morning of the shooting that the student was in a “violent mood.”

What happened to Abby Zwerner?

On Jan. 6, 2023, Zwerner was shot in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School.

According to a March 2023 Today interview, the teacher was sitting at a table reading to her students when the student pulled the trigger and shot her. The bullet went through her left hand and lodged itself in her chest, where it still remains.

“I just will never forget the look on his face that he gave me while he pointed the gun directly at me,” she told Today.

Despite being shot, Zwerner was still able to escort her students out of her classroom. She then went to the school office, where she passed out. Her lung had collapsed because of the bullet, according to The New York Times.

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

According to NBC News, the shooting took place on the student’s first day back in class following a suspension he received two days earlier for slamming Zwerner’s phone.

How did Abby Zwerner’s student get a gun?

Per The New York Times, the student took the loaded 9-millimeter handgun from the purse of his mother, Deja Taylor. According to the Patch, the boy said he climbed onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser where the purse with the gun was.

Taylor told investigators the gun was secured with a trigger lock, though one was never found.

“I am, as a parent, obviously willing to take responsibility for him because he can’t take responsibility” for himself, she told Good Morning America in May 2023.

Taylor continued, “I just truly would like to apologize that … [Zwerner got] hurt. We were actually kind of forming a relationship with me having to be in the classroom. And she is really a bright person.”

After Zwerner was shot and she left the classroom, reading specialist Amy Kovac entered and restrained the boy, per CBS News.

“I shot that bitch dead,” the student said, according to Kovac. “I got my mom’s gun last night.”

In December 2023, Taylor was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of felony child neglect, The New York Times reported. The month prior, she was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison for using marijuana while owning a firearm and making false statements about drug use, per the newspaper. The sentences will be served back-to-back.

According to CBS News, in a statement read by one of her attorneys at her sentencing, Taylor said she would feel remorse “for the rest of my life.”

Where is Abby Zwerner now?

On Nov. 6, 2025, a jury awarded Zwerner $10 million in her civil lawsuit against Parker. She had sought $40 million.

In the nearly three years since the shooting, Zwerner has undergone six surgeries and still can’t fully use her left hand.

“Overall, I would say I do struggle with things, doing things,” she said in October 2025, per CNN, revealing she has difficulty handling simple tasks such as opening bags of chips and water bottles. “I just want to stay home.”

Despite her love for teaching, Zwerner has not returned to the classroom, due to “anxiety, the PTSD and the fear,” as she told WVEC News in January 2024.

“I was in my career that I went to college for, that I worked hard to get, and I loved it,” she continued. “The thought never crossed my mind that I was going to be shot by a 6-year-old in my classroom. I feel like it’s just been taken from me, it’s been stripped of me.”

Zwerner told The Virginian-Pilot that the shooting was “always going to be there with me … and it’s always there in the back of my head.”

According to NPR, she has become a licensed cosmetologist.

Where is Abby Zwerner’s student now?

The student who shot Zwerner was not criminally charged.

“We do not believe the law supports charging and convicting a 6-year-old with aggravated assault,” attorney Howard Gwynn told WTKR in March 2023.

In a January 2024 interview with WAVY, Calvin Taylor, the boy’s great-grandfather, said the boy attends “a different, undisclosed school,” adding that he “loves to cook, and [makes] brownies for his family.”

Taylor said that his great-grandson also “hopes to learn to ride a horse one day.”