A courtroom in Newport News, Virginia fell silent Thursday as a judge cut short one of the most unusual criminal trials in recent memory — dismissing every charge against a school administrator accused of ignoring repeated warnings before a 6-year-old boy pulled a handgun from his backpack and opened fire on his teacher.
The defendant, former assistant principal Ebony Parker, broke down in tears the moment Judge Rebecca Robinson delivered her ruling.
There would be no jury deliberation. No verdict. The case was over.
Robinson granted the defense motion to strike all eight felony counts of child abuse and endangerment Parker had been fighting in court, concluding the charges did not hold up under Virginia law.
At the center of the case was a single, devastating event: on January 6, 2023, a first grader at Richneck Elementary School retrieved a 9mm handgun — taken from his mother’s purse — and shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, in the hand and chest.
Fragments of that bullet remain lodged in Zwerner’s body today.
Multiple people had warned Parker before the shooting that the boy may have been carrying a weapon. Prosecutors argued she failed to act.
But Robinson concluded that failing to act, under the specific language of Virginia law, simply did not constitute a crime.
“There is no precedent for what is before the court,” Robinson said from the bench, describing a situation where a school official was being held criminally responsible for the behavior of a child.
The judge also raised pointed questions about how prosecutors had constructed the charges themselves — specifically whether the eight counts were meant to represent the bullets remaining in the gun or the students sitting in Zwerner’s classroom when the shot was fired.
Under either framework, Robinson found the legal logic strained.
“Those legal theories do not fit plausibly with the theory of the legal statute,” she said. “Therefore, I do grant defense motion to strike on all eight counts of felony child abuse and endangerment.”
She offered little additional commentary. “What happened that day was awful,” Robinson said, and stopped there.
The jury, which had been dismissed Wednesday evening after prosecutors wrapped up their case, never made it back into the courtroom.
Because Robinson acted on a motion to strike rather than a mistrial, the ruling is permanent. Prosecutors have no path to appeal, and Parker cannot face a second trial.
Any further prosecution would constitute double jeopardy under the Constitution.
Parker had pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, had already faced her own legal reckoning. She pleaded guilty to child neglect and firearms charges after investigators determined her son took the weapon directly from her purse. She is currently serving a sentence of nearly four years behind bars.
Defense attorney Curtis Rogers had argued strenuously before the ruling that prosecutors never established criminal intent on Parker’s part.
“Based on the information that Dr. Parker had, she made decisions,” Rogers told the court. “In hindsight, those decisions actually were determined not to be the correct decision. But her decision was not an act of neglect. She didn’t intend harm to the students.”
Rogers added that Parker “didn’t believe there was a weapon, so that explains her conduct that day.”
Prosecutor Joshua Jenkins countered that Parker’s failure to search the student placed more than 20 children directly in harm’s way.
“It’s not that Dr. Parker knew there was a danger necessarily but that she should have known … there were multiple warnings by multiple people,” he argued.
“The mere fact that a weapon was on campus should have triggered the crisis defined in the crisis management plan. Yet, it did not.”
Legal analysts outside the case said the prosecution faced structural problems from the start. Former prosecutor Neama Rahmani put it plainly: “It’s very difficult to prosecute someone for an omission.”
Criminal law, Rahmani explained, typically requires an affirmative act — something a person did, not something they failed to do.
Newport News defense attorney Rich Hallenback echoed that assessment, saying Parker’s conduct “doesn’t really cleanly fit into any particular crime.”
Local attorney Chad Roberts said Robinson “made the right decision,” explaining that “the alleged actions didn’t fit the crime itself. It was unclear which framework they were trying to fit into the mold.”
Rahmani also pointed to two comparable situations — criminal cases brought against law enforcement officers who were accused of failing to intervene during the school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Uvalde, Texas. Both ended in acquittals.
Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell, who oversaw the special prosecution, made clear his office had wanted a jury to decide the outcome.
“It was the citizens of Newport News, through the grand jury process, who determined that indictments against Ebony Parker were appropriate based upon the evidence presented,” Bell said in a statement.
“We had hoped the community would have had the opportunity to weigh in through the full judicial process. Nevertheless, the Court has now concluded the matter as it deemed appropriate under the law.”
The criminal acquittal does not erase Parker’s civil exposure.
A separate jury previously ordered her to pay $10 million in damages to Zwerner, finding her negligent for failing to search the boy despite direct warnings from Zwerner herself and others.
The city of Newport News, however, continues to contest that judgment in an appeals court. Zwerner has not collected a single dollar of that award.
Her legal team released a statement addressing both outcomes.
“From the beginning, our focus has remained on obtaining justice in civil court for the preventable failures that led to Abby being shot. A Newport News jury has already spoken, returning a $10 million verdict in Abby’s favor. Yet even today, the City of Newport News continues to resist accepting responsibility and delivering the justice that verdict represents,” said attorneys Diane Toscano, Kevin Biniazan, and Jeffrey Breit.
