The six-year-old student who shot his teacher in the US earlier this year, boasted about the incident saying “I shot [her] dead”, unsealed court documents show.
While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.
His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner - who survived - filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.
The boy has not been charged.
The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child.
In Ms Zwerner’s lawsuit, filed in April, she accuses school officials of gross negligence for ignoring warning signs and argues the defendants knew the child "had a history of random violence
The documents also mention another incident with the same student while he was in kindergarten. A retired teacher told police he started “choking her to the point she could not breathe”.
It’s amazing to me how focused these comments are on the child being “evil” and not the environment that created this situation. A child isn’t born believing that shooting their teacher is a viable solution to their problems. At 6 years old you’re barely functional. For this to happen they had to exist in a profoundly fucked up environment with no moral compass and access to a lot of information, presented without good context, far above their age. Everyone responsible for raising this kid should be held responsible.
This kid needs years of therapy and support and a loving caregiver. Before the age of 10 children are incredibly impressionable and still undergoing very basic core development, until the age of 25 people are still in development to some level. There are many years ahead where this child can be saved from themselves. There is no reason to call a 6 year old irredeemable.
It can be both sadly. Some kids are born not right. But will usually be ok with good and professional follow up and loving parents. But there are some kids born without the ability to emphasize with others and that never will get the help they need. And they become terrifying in their teens.
Empathy is something that is taught. If some kid does not have the ability to have empathy for others, it’s likely because they were neglected/abused during childhood, and were not taught such a thing as empathy.
No, there really are people who are born without the capacity of compassion and empathy. They can learn to mimic it and live by the laws but it needs therapy and people who catch that there is a problem early enough.
It’s actually problematic that people immediately jump to the conclusion that the parents did a poor job, because it leads to people not getting adequate help. It also leads to parents not seeking help because they think they just need to be better at parenting when that’s often not going to change all that much.
Everything said above can be true in parts or at the same time. Obviously, this kid had access to a gun and shouldn’t have. Likely, the kid has other problems at home. Possibly, the kid has a neurological divergence that hadn’t been fully investigated.
Fuck the parent for not securing the gun. Fuck the school for not showing more caution. Fuck the teacher for getting shot… wait… (/s on the last one, of course)
But also, how can a kindergartener choke an adult to the point they can’t breathe? I’d think anyone who isn’t elderly could throw a child that age. I probably don’t have all the facts about that.
But also, how can a kindergartener choke an adult to the point they can’t breathe?
Because when you do not feel for other people you can go all in. Most people are not brutal and even unintentionally hold back against others. It is also really hard to defend against a child if you don’t want to hurt the child.
My neighbours kid broke one of his mother’s fingers at an age before he went to school (so he must have been 7 years old max). If you do not want to seriously hurt a child, how do you defend yourself when they won’t let go?
But also, how can a kindergartener choke an adult to the point they can’t breathe? I’d think anyone who isn’t elderly could throw a child that age.
I wondered this too, and my only (weak) hypothesis is the teacher was too afraid to hurt the child in return before they realized how serious it was going to get. But I’m also not sure how little 5 year old hands would have the strength, unless they used a rope or other tool.
Edit: the article does say the choked teacher is now retired, so they also could have been fairly old.
Having actually worked around troubled youth and seen literally 100’s of children move through the system, I don’t think you could be more wrong than you are. Prior to working with troubled youth I assumed it was more like 50/50 environment/genetics. I’m completely convinced it’s almost entirely environmental. In nearly 100% of the cases I’ve seen troubled children, they had parents that were doing something profoundly wrong. Whether it be neglect, violence, sexual abuse, etc, there was always something extremely concerning. I think it is actually incredibly rare for a child to end up severely messed up without extreme “help” from the parents getting there.
The problem with your anecdotal evidence is that what you experience can simply be the consequence of children only ending up in the system when they have a troublesome environment.
I wouldn’t rule out lack of empathy also being potentially biological / genetic. Empathy is based on feeling which is based on chemicals and hormones in your body. It wouldn’t be impossible to be born with the inability to produce/recognize those chemicals/hormones.
Yes, I agree with this very much.
And their adulthood
After the kindergarten incident the child should’ve been given a psychiatric evaluation. It is possible he’s got a “screw loose” but in the vast majority of cases like this you’ll find there’s violence in the home. The foster system sucks ass, but in this case rolling the dice probably would’ve led to a better outcome than leaving him in that home.
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Not sure I fully agree, humans are social animals and learn what behaviors are beneficial for both themselves and the group. You can point to specific things that run counter to this, but that doesn’t change what humans are. But it is a distinction without a difference. Either way it’s the environment the child is in that is eventuating a negative outcome.
None of that conflicts with the comment you replied to. You’re both correct.
Are you outing yourself?
The earliest years are where the individual gains their fundamental personality. This kid is toast, no matter what kind of treatment or assistance they receive. They weren’t born this way, but they’re now done for.
I assure you, even though it is likely that the environment failed them, some kids are just plain evil and will require lifelong support. Parents arent always to blame.
Yeah, but parents who leave loaded guns around where their six-year-olds can have access to them are probably to blame.
Why do you think that some kids are just plain evil? I’m reading several comments stating this thing and it just baffles me, to say the least.
Because my sibling was a psycho, and I doubt there is anything more my parents could have done. You have to get to know one (child or not) to understand that this exists not just in movies.
Sorry about your experience, I can imagine how terrifying this must be. I guess that there are many reasons why I (like others) am very skeptical about it being just nature, especially considering science doesn’t have a definitive answer to this (as far as I know). I know that genetics play a role in predicting future diagnoses. It’s just that having full blown personality disorders from childhood (especially when personality is something that you develop during childhood) sounds weird, and many people are labeled “bad” when it’s really a dark childhood that is running the scene.
Absolutely, I never met anyone else like that in my life. I assumed most people with bad behaviours had bad childhood, but I can’t deny knowing at least one person with a troubling disorder.
People say things like this, then years later find out their siblings/demon kids in their lives were abused (sexually or no) by parents friends/distant relatives etc.
I don’t think people become psychopaths or develop extreme BPD out of nowhere. Like never.
You don’t believe in genetic mental illness? That one can be born with a sickness in the brain?
You don’t have to believe everyone on the internet, I can only offer you my slice of experience. Nothing wrong happened to my sibling. It was a child who actively tried to hurt people and kill stuff barely after learning to walk. It scared everyone for a while but medication and therapy helped turn they into a stable and functional adult. My sibling is also pretty open about it, at least with me.
I do believe a lot of our issues are genetic. But we also know different people with identical genetical “problems” will and won’t develop mental illnesses based on their environments and traumatic events in their lives. Epigenetics and all. Like schizophrenia. It was first purely genetic, now we’re pretty sure it’s also environment and experience led.
Because people aren’t born as a blank slate, although people seem to like that idea. Genetics play a huge role in personality and character. Some people are born without remorse. They need help and therapy like every other type of disability. But people are just too hung up on the idea of free will and virtuous character values to accept that our brains are organs that can have broken parts.
When you happen to cross paths with someone like that you will know. A kid I know is like this. He would hurt his younger brother to get attention and use other manipulation tactics (at 8 years old!). He will lie straight to your face and it’s just obvious he is very different from other children.
His mother had to stop working and basically 24/7 supervise this kid and the overall situation is nightmarish.
Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself some people are just naturally bad and thus undeserving of compassion. To some this is preferable to thinking that an impressionable child may be pushed to violence by their environment.
Never mind that the child was likely mimicking his father (who had attempted to murder his mother on several occasions) and was raised in the kind of environment where a loaded weapon was just left around for him to grab.
I mean, no offence, but you can use that line of reasoning to explain away literally anything.
“Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself all people are just naturally good, and thus can always be saved.”
I was born and raised with a psycho, I really wished for the longest time that my sibling was normal and just acting out. I guess having first-hand experience with a sick person will erase someone’s doubts real quick.
I’m not explaining away anything, nor denying that dangerously violent or even psychotic children exist. I was specifically railing against the idea of condemning a real, life human child because you have decided that they were “born bad”, in face of the plentiful evidence that they were raised in a violent environment.
For what it’s worth I’m sorry you had to go through that, but you’re not the only one who grew up with someone unstable and violent. I would not presume to speak to your experience, but in my case I was all too privy to the neglect and abuse they were put through and it’s left me convinced that barring any actual inborn neurological damage the only way a child turns violent is if something is pushing them to act that way.
I was not making a statement on the specific child in the article, I also mentioned that the environment is often the most important factor. I am just raising the fact that in some cases it can be a mental disorder, and it is not about deciding who is born bad, but assessing correctly every situation so you can do the greatest good, and protect yourself. I think we agree mostly, maybe my original comment could sound reductionist to some ears, but I tried my best to convey that I was pointing out a rare scenario, specifically to counter the arguments that you can’t have this sort of mental disorder at the time of birth. It is important to point out, otherwise innocent parents will get harmed (not those in the article, obviously)
There are exceptions to every rule. Some kids are born evil, although you’re probably right that the parents suck too
True, but we have no idea if this child is a born psychopath or not. We do know they did something extremely depraved and were raised very poorly.
This boy choked someone and shot someone else before turning 7. Maybe a psychiatric hospital should be his home.
Fucking seriously… This kid has future murderer written all over him… I get that your brain isn’t fully developed yet, but I don’t think kids like him go from “literally a psychopath” to “normal adult”
A normal kid might do something crazy in a fit of rage or emotion, but then regret what they did when they see the fallout from it. This little psycho boasted about it…
A normal kid doesn’t see their father try to murder their mother . . .
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Yo, how strong does a kindergartner need to be to be able to choke out a fully grown adult? Wild.
How deranged does a kid need to be for the system to keep a very close eye on them? Seriously that kid is probably a psychopath who’s gonna kill more people if nobody prevents him from doing so
That or he’s badly abused/neglected, and is in need of very serious therapy.
My wife’s hometown of like 300 people had a school shooter, and the kid was one of the worst abuse cases I’d ever heard. Tortured, made to live in a closet and eat dog food, shit like that. Ended up shooting the principal while wrestling for the gun (his only victim) and the principal was like the only guy in town who brought the kid food and clothes and stuff (which his parents then “punished” him for receiving). Just an awful situation.
In some ways, this kid acting out so early may save his and others lives, fucked up as it is.
Bigger boy (for his age) and a smaller woman, especially a kid using all his strength, it can definitely happen.
Especially if you’re trying not to hurt them.
It says she’s retired so she’s probably up there in age. That and probably trying not to hurt him
It’s probably more about the person being strangled not wanting to exert too much force on a child.
My 5 year old is very big compared to my 5’1" 105 lbs. Honestly I could totally see a kid his size if they were deranged being able to do some serious damage to someone my size.
This is why some US Americans want armed teachers ?
To shoot back at 6 year olds ?
They say it’s so teachers can protect themselves and their students (from the consequences of failed gun laws) but really, it’s just because they have to say something – and it can’t be the truth.
At a civilian level, most of them simply don’t care. They’re confident it will never be their kids and they consider a stranger’s children less important than their own easy access to firearms.
But they can’t say that, so they make flowery comments about freedom, defending their family and how they’re the ones keeping America out of the hands of tyrants, even though they staunchly support tyrants and wouldn’t even wear a mask to protect other people, let alone fight and die for them.
On the corporate and political level, there’s good money and easy votes in guns. It’s no different to tobacco, asbestos and everything else they fought to profit from even as it killed people.
But they can’t say that either. So instead, they coordinate what today’s scapegoat is going to be. Computer games? Too many doors? Timid police? Whatever keeps the money flowing.
The important part for all of them is demanding other solutions are tried before gun control. They know they won’t work, but it will buy them more time and the more time they waste, the better.
That’s why their current solution is “free, universal healthcare for everybody in America, including 5 year olds and people who don’t want treatment, done to a standard far beyond even the most cutting edge of medicine, completely and permanently curing people in less time than it takes to buy a gun”.
Which they then block anyway, because it’s important their conditions for supporting gun control are never met.
@LarryTheMatador @PoliticalAgitator
Yup. I followed them because of this.
Not just teachers: this obviously wouldn’t have happened, if all the other students had been armed, too.
The only thing that can stop a bad 6-year-old with a gun is a good 6-year-old with a gun.
They want armed teachers because the alternative is gun control. They don’t want gun control, so apparently throwing fire on a burning house is now the way to put out fires.
Bringing whole new level to “Kindergarten Cop” I don’t think Arny could have predicted this
Maybe because of the tumor?
Eets naht ah toomaaah!
Yes but they seem to be forgetting the very obvious thing that will happen (and has already happened) when you have more guns being brought into schools, even by those you (misguidedly) trust.
For some reason they don’t seem to be able to get that not having guns in or anywhere near a school is the best way not to have shootings at schools.
That article highlights just one obvious problem. Here are others:
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We can’t even rely on our cops to shoot only the people who need to be shot. Now we’re going to trust that teachers will be able to perform better under those stresses - which may include the need to shoot one of their own students - than cops do? How on earth does that track?
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Legal gun owners go on shooting sprees too. Really easy for you when you are already whitelisted to be showing up to school armed.
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A variation on the article I linked: Careless teacher with a gun leaves it in the bathroom and kid finds it and shoots themselves and/or others with it instead of turning it in.
Legal gun owners go on shooting sprees too.
And teachers have to deal with an incredibly stressful situation all day which ever-restrictive Republican education laws in many states make even more stressful. Put guns in the mix and one of them will go postal one day.
But the solution could be as simple as the gun is locked and retrievable by the teacher either by biometrics or code. It could also trigger a school wide alarm if the firearm is released so it would give other classes a chance to lock down. The option is there if the teacher needs it they don’t need to be having the gun on themselves.
Sure, if none of the teachers ever break the rules or are careless with that system in any way, it will prevent everything except the part where we expect teachers to be better than cops at target identification and using a firearm under stress, and also expect them to be willing to shoot a student they know personally.
We’re also expecting them to accept all the trauma that comes with that, while getting paid shit, and having chosen a career in education.
That’s why I said the option would be there if they chose it. They wouldn’t be required to but it would be nice that they had the option to fight for their life.
Better gun control would mean there would be a much lower chance they would ever be in a situation where they need to fight for their life.
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No, no, no, you’ve gotten it all wrong. We need armed teachers to shoot dangerous books.
There’s no way we can ban all of the dangerous books, so we need teachers to shoot them out of the hands of our precious youth.
We need to arm all the teachers. And all the students. And all the guns. And all the bullets: they can carry little baby guns with more guns in them.
Only after every atom in the universe is a gun will we ever be safe from guns.
Screw the kids parents
So two observations, first how is leaving a loaded gun in reach of a 6 year old not more than a misdemeanor? I don’t even let my kid near a slingshot or pelet gun unsupervised much less anything lethal.
Second, “choking her to the point she could not breath”? How big is this kid that this is even possible? That’s no small feat for a full grown adult if you’re talking bare handed much less a young child.
That the kid at that age even thought that was a thing to do says all too much about the influences on them. We need another Mr. Rogers here…
Second, “choking her to the point she could not breath”? How big is this kid that this is even possible? That’s no small feat for a full grown adult if you’re talking bare handed much less a young child.
I assume it was an old lady because the article mentions it was a retired teacher. Considering the kid has only been alive 6 years, it probably happened the year prior, so if the teacher was able to retire that soon after, they probably were in their 90s or early hundos
That’s possible, to that end the pre-school my youngest attended had a rule of two teachers per class so at any given time one could lead the class and the other watch for troubles since young kids can be volatile at times if they want something right now. Not good if the kid is that misguided to the point of outright violence, but at the same time kids will climb the cubbords sometimes and you need to be able to take them off or catch them if they fall. If the teacher is not physically capable of that then they need an assistant in the room.
That’s exactly the rhetoric that makes it so hard for men to talk about domestic violence.
Confused…? Which part?
I think he’s objecting to “why couldn’t you stop someone smaller and weaker from abusing you?”.
Maybe, but there’s stopping an adult with an actual intent to harm you versus just picking up someone you could probabbly carry under one arm. At some point if you can’t do that well, please don’t get a large dog or such for a pet I guess?
Additionally, the thought was more ‘how can a kid that small even muster the strength to strangle someone to begin with’.
The point is that it’s not about “strength”. And no matter your intend, as long as you picture such events as “whoever is physically stronger wins”, you are destructive.
Why do you think it’s hard for a man to fight back a female partner?
Why do you think it’s hard for a teacher to fight back one of their pupils?
How easy is it for those people to talk about this trauma, if people like you go: “I don’t understand how you can be treated by someone you can pick up under your arm lmao.”?
So I’m not inclined to get drug off on some distraction with an easily offended sort over the morally correct phrasing or how one should think, but I’ll put it as this.
1: Abuse comes in many forms, not just physical, focusing the notion of keeping it secret and being difficult to talk about on the one most outwardly visible face of it detracts from the larger battles happening in the emotive and mental abuse space.
2: There is a material difference in physical assault perpetuated by an adult or mature child which has a level of malice and intent behind it and that done by a child which, although I’m speculating since it’s not listed, would have been doing this bare handed and without a properly formed mindset to fully comprehend their own actions. A small child at that age likely weighs somewhere under 60 pounds and has hands of relevant size. At some point a person simply needs to be able to fend for themselves or be considered incapable of dealing with a situation, be that in physically resisting or in correcting the behavior of the kid to begin with.
A teacher shouldn’t have to plan for a kid bringing a gun to class, that’s fully on the parents being negligent, but if you work with kids, particularly young ones that haven’t properly learned control of their emotions yet, it should be expected that you’re going to get kicked in the shins here and again and be capable and prepared to deal with that.
50th term abortion
Kids psychologically profile the same as a psychopath. This is because kids usually haven’t developed their sense of empathy yet.
I wonder if unfettered access to violent media, without parental guidance or context, coupled with a culture of narcissistic whinging about how important guns are for life, with zero structure at home led to this happening.
As a person who grew up with unrestricted access to violent media, I argue against this point.
I was watching violent and bloody films like Blade, Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn around the time I was 5. There are a host of violent games avaliable from that time, too.
I feel like there are two reasons one would seek this type of media out: the aesthetics of violence (there’s a reason John Wick has 4 films) and genuine psychopathy, a craving to emulate.
I’d argue very few people have an actual craving to emulate extreme violence, even in an environment saturated with its artificial presentation, and that those people would do so without the access to said saturated media. I blame the parents mostly. It’s not the movies that make the attitude for how to treat others, it’s how you’re shown to treat others in real life
Even as a toddler I understood film was fake
I would put the access to weapons first of all.
Or lack of conveniently available and accessible abortion clinics.
And possibly FAS or some similar issue .
My best friend is a teacher and I’m genuinely worry that something like this will happen to her. I feel like more and more parents are failing their kids, only because the system is failing, lets go ahead and not commit the fundamental attribution error.
Can I request a timeline reset please?
What in the hell?
Murica
FrEeDoM
I scrolled past this but saw the headline and then BBC and it caught my attention. I scrolled back because this is some strange shit for the UK. I then started reading and saw it say the US and stopped reading. Nothing more to read here.
Well thanks for sharing. Glad to know how you scroll.
See yall next school shooting
Do I have time to eat before?
