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.
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?
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.
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.
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)