During a news conference Friday afternoon, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew announced that a 6-year-old boy was in police custody after shooting a teacher at Richneck Elementary School.
Drew said that the young man was a student at the time. He is currently in police custody. “We have been in contact with our commonwealth attorney and a few other agencies in order to provide this young man with services.”
According to Drew, the female teacher, who is in her 30s, was shot inside a classroom and “this was not an accidental shooting.”
A single shot was fired during an altercation between the teacher and the student who had the firearm, according to the police chief.
Friday evening, Drew said the teacher’s injuries were life-threatening but that there was “some improvement in the last update that we got.”
According to the chief, no other students were involved.
It is still under investigation, he said.
“We’ll investigate, we’ll ask questions, and we’ll find out what happened. I want to know where that firearm came from, what the circumstances were,” Drew said.
Dr. George Parker, Superintendent of Newport News Public Schools, said Richneck Elementary School will be closed on Monday.
“I’m in shock, and I’m disheartened,” Parker said at a news conference on Friday. “We need to educate our children about guns and their dangers and we need to keep them safe.”
“We need the community’s support, continued support, to ensure that guns are not available to young people, and I’m sounding like a broken record today, since I keep repeating that: We need to keep guns out of the hands of the young people,” the superintendent said.
Also, Parker said, authorities are investigating past incidents that may have led up to the shooting.