A grand jury in Virginia has indicted the mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher on charges of child neglect and failing to secure her handgun in the family's home, a prosecutor said Monday.
A first-grade Virginia teacher who was shot and seriously wounded by her 6-year-old student filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing them of gross negligence for allegedly ignoring multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the boy had a gun and was in a “violent mood.”
In the wake of the tragic Nashville shooting, families across the commonwealth are figuring out how to best talk about this horrific event with their children. Feelings of grief, anger, hopelessness, and sadness can overpower and overwhelm even the strongest person, because we are all human. Sometimes, it’s hard to talk about those overwhelming emotions, especially in the wake of another senseless act of gun violence.
Democrats in the Virginia Senate passed several gun safety bills, while Republicans in the House of Delegates passed their own set of bills aimed at making it easier to obtain and carry firearms.
Earlier this week, a panel from the Democratic-led Virginia Senate voted to advance legislation related to gun safety, ranging from a bill that would require adults to keep guns safely locked up and away from any children in the household to restrictions on the sale of assault-style weapons, as well as one that would specify in Virginia state law that firearms are banned at public higher education institutions.
Concerned staff warned administrators at a Virginia elementary school three times that a 6-year-old boy had a gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shot and wounded a teacher, but the administration "was paralyzed by apathy" and didn't call police, remove the boy from class or lock down the school, the wounded teacher's lawyer said Wednesday.