NEWPORT NEWS — A Newport News detective raced into Richneck Elementary School after first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was shot.
“Where’s the main office?” Detective Amber Ruhlen asked as she frantically put on latex gloves.
Down a short hallway, Zwerner was lying on the floor at the center of the school’s main office, with blood from her hand and chest. Two Richneck staff members were by her side, tending to her wounds.
“We’re gonna take care of her,” Ruhlen said as she unzipped her first aid kit. “Medics are on their way.”
Watch Detective Ruhlen’s body camera footage here.
“How many times was she shot?” the detective asks. “How many gunshots did you hear?”
“One,” Zwerner says softly.
“I’m gonna get up close and personal with you,” said Ruhlen, turning Zwerner slightly over to see if there was an exit wound on her back. There was not.
Another man came over and asked Abby her name, and asked how old she was.
“Twenty-five,” Zwerner whispers. Then a school staffer said it louder so they could hear.
“I can’t breathe,” Zwerner says as Fire Department medics take over the treatment a few minutes later.
Several medics put her on a gurney, with Ruhlen coming with her onto the ambulance and trying to distract Zwerner as they raced to Riverside Regional Medical Center under police escort.
“We’re gonna take really good care of you,” Ruhlen says as the ambulance takes off from Richneck. Seconds later, Zwerner asks “Can you tell me a story?” — apparently as a way of distracting herself.
“Yeah, of course,” Ruhlen replies, asking Zwerner about her pets, her pet’s name and how old she is, and whether she’s dating anyone.
Zwerner replies in low tone that she has a 3-year-old cat, and has a boyfriend that she “kind of” lives with.
The scenes — captured on Ruhlen’s body camera footage — were played Wednesday during a civil trial in Newport News Circuit Court in which Zwerner is suing Richneck’s assistant principal, Ebony J. Parker.
This is Room 11 at Richneck Elementary School, where Abby Zwerner was shot by a 6-year-old student on Jan. 6, 2023. The gun is at left, under the table, while the boy’s bookbag is near the desk to the left of the window.
Zwerner contends Parker was grossly negligent in failing to act on several warnings that the 6-year-old first grader was armed in school that day. During a first-grade reading class that afternoon, the boy drew a gun from his front hoodie pocket and shot Zwerner from about 10 feet away.
The bullet went through Zwerner’s left hand — which she held up as the boy fired — with a large fragment ending up in her left chest.
Former Newport News Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Blythe was the first on scene, saying the school’s doors were locked when he and other officers approached. A custodian let them in.
He described going into Room 11.
Amy Kovac, a reading specialist who ran into the room when she was Zwerner and the other students flee, was in a corner with the student, her arms and legs wrapped around him to keep him from leaving.
A gun was lying nearby and the shooter’s checkered bookbag was near a desk — with ABCs and reading tips for the first-graders adorning the walls.
“We didn’t expect to see so young a suspect,” Blythe said.
Daniel Munn, Riverside Hospital’s chief of surgery, testified that the bullet that struck Zwerner’s left hand “went past the heart and just barely missed it,” and ended up two centimeters from her aorta.
It also fractured Zwerner’s rib cage.
Munn said Zwerner had a collapsed lung. The treatment is relatively simple — using a tube to remove excess air and allow the lung to expand. But without such treatment, he said, “this can oftentimes cause a patient to pass away at the scene.”
Munn testified that it’s too dangerous to remove the bullet fragment. “It’s more dangerous to remove the bullet than to leave it in place,” Munn said. And because of the bullet still inside, he said, Zwerner can never have an MRI.
Two hand surgeons, Romney Anderson and James Stuart, gave in depth testimony on the six surgeries that Zwerner has had on her left hand — removing bullet fragments, sewing tendons together, reducing scarring.
Another surgery is expected in March.
The surgeons spoke of how they had to take bone grafts from Zwerner’s pelvis to replace and repair bone in her hand.
A former military doctor, Anderson said it was the type of injury often seen on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It’s a devastating hand injury with a significant amount of bone injuries or bone fractures as well as a number of soft tissue injuries that were associated with that,” Anderson said.
At one point during Anderson’s testimony, Zwerner’s attorney Jeffrey Breit asked the surgeon and Zwerner to stand before the jury to show jurors her hands side-by-side. They demonstrated color changes, reduced range of motion and scar tissue on the left.
Anderson described an operation in which surgeons forced breaks to the scar tissue without breaking the bone. That was successful, he said, in improving Zwerner’s range of motion.
“She’ll certainly never have the exact same range of motion as the other side, never the same mobility,” Anderson said, referring to “fused joints” and chronic pain expected over time. “I don’t think she’s going to make drastic improvements and have her hand be like the other hand.”
During cross-examinations by Parker’s attorney Sarah Douglas, both surgeons said they knew Zwerner had gone to school to be a hair dresser in 2024, and they said they did not have a concern that she’s now a licensed cosmetologist.
Also on Wednesday, Hannah Zwerner — Abby’s twin sister — described the two growing up together, saying they were “best friends” in addition to being sisters.
After college, Hannah said, the sisters lived together, both of them school teachers, with Hannah teaching high school English and Abby at Richneck. And Abby, her sister said, always took work home.
Abby went to work early and stayed late, her sister said.
“She had mountains of paperwork,” Hannah said. “She would hook up to the printer in our living room and print things for lessons the next day. And I just remember thinking, she’s so dedicated, and I just never brought work home.”
Hannah said she went with Abby to help decorate her classroom, saying Abby always wanted the room looking a certain way.
Before the shooting, she said, Abby was “full of light and spark and just so outgoing and just silly.” But now, Hannah said, her sister is “more reclusive.” The light in her “is still there,” but “it is very dimmed.”
Though it once felt that Abby had a lot to look forward to, she doesn’t have that anymore.
“She’s just not the person that she was,” Hannah said. “I feel like she’s kind of lost her sense of direction in a way.”
Parker’s lawyer, Douglas, asked Hannah about the fact that she created a GoFundMe page and sold T-shirts to raise money, and got Hannah to acknowledge that Abby felt well enough to attend a Taylor Swift concert in Philadelphia a couple years ago.
“But that was not without its own challenges,” Hannah said.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
