Police in the United States of America has stated that a six-year-old student shot and wounded a teacher in the state of Virginia during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom.
The shooting occurred on Friday afternoon at Richneck Elementary School. Newport News police chief Steve Drew confirmed to reporters that the suspect was a 6-year-old boy.
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No one other than the boy’s teacher was injured, but police tactical teams entered the building in case the shooter still posed a threat. The teacher, a woman in her 30s, suffered life-threatening injuries, but is starting to show some improvement.
“We believe that once we walked in and had the information we had coming in (the school), we had the individual in custody,” Drew told reporters at a briefing outside the school.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting. We had a situation in one particular location where a gunshot was fired.”
The Police said the child had a handgun in the classroom and that they took that student into custody. Drew went further to state that the shooting was not an accident.
Al Jazeera reported that Investigators were trying to figure out where the child obtained the gun. No further details about the shooting, the altercation or what happened inside the school was provided by the police chief.
Questions seeking information about whether the authorities were in touch with the boy’s parents were left unanswered.
Rather the Police chief Drew said that, “We have been in contact with our commonwealth’s attorney [local prosecutor] and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man.”
Newport News Public Schools confirmed on Facebook that parents and students had been reunited at a gymnasium door, and officials have said there will be no classes on Monday.
Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s aircraft carriers and other US Navy vessels.
Richneck Elementary school has about 550 students, who are in kindergarten through to fifth grade (10-11 years old), according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website.
Schools superintendent George Parker said he was “shocked” and “disheartened” by the shooting and called for more to be done to stop children getting hold of firearms.
Mr Parker explained that all school campuses are equipped for random metal detector searches, but they were not deployed at Richneck Elementary on Friday.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
