NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Police took a six-year-old student into custody Friday after a shooting at a Virginia elementary school sent a teacher to the hospital, police and school officials in the city of Newport News said. The woman has life-threatening injuries, police said.
No students were injured at the shooting at Richneck Elementary School, police said in a news release.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Steve Drew, the city's police chief, told reporters outside the school. “We have a situation in one particular location where a gunshot was fired.”
"The altercation was between a 6-year-old, the student, who did have the firearm, and the teacher," Drew said "And then a round was fired."
Drew said that the woman in her 30s suffered a gunshot wound in the classroom and was taken to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Drew said the boy used a handgun and that "this was not an accidental shooting."
The police chief did not specifically address questions about whether authorities were in touch with the boy’s parents, but said members of the police department were handling that investigation.
"He is right now in police custody. We're working out the best way, to our partners and different resources, to address that situation," Drew said. "We have been in contact with our Commonwealth's Attorney and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man."
A handgun was used in the shooting, Drew said. Investigators were trying to figure out where he obtained it. The police chief did not provide further details about the shooting, the altercation or what happened inside the school.
The police chief said that while the call initially came in for an active shooter, the shooting happened in an "isolated location." The chief said officers recovered evidence there.
"We were here within minutes," Drew said. "We did not have an individual going around the school firing off rounds."
Drew said the school was "completely secure" and checked by the SWAT team and officers in a "very deliberate, but orderly fashion."
FULL INTERVIEW: Teacher critically injured in elementary school shooting
Police wrote around 2:50 p.m. that they were "beginning the process to reunite parents with students."
Drew said that all of the students were safe.
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 U.S. Navy vessels.
Richneck has about 550 students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website. School officials have already said that there will be no classes at the school on Monday.
“Today our students got a lesson in gun violence,” said George Parker III, Newport News schools superintendent, “and what guns can do to disrupt, not only an educational environment, but also a family, a community.”
Virginia law does not allow 6-year-olds to be tried as adults.
In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if found guilty.
A juvenile judge would have authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and place a child under the purview of the Department of Social Services.
A school shooting involving a 6-year-old is extremely rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston’s Northeastern University.
Fox told The Associated Press Friday evening that he could think of one previous incident involving a child that age.
In 2000, a 6-year-old boy fired a bullet from a .32-caliber gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, Michigan, 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the neck, according to an AP article from the time. She died a half-hour later.
Fox analyzed school shooting data sets going back to 1970 from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which is located at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He said the data listed school shootings involving children ages 7, 8, 9 and older, but not 6-year-olds.
Another factor that stands out about the Virginia shooting is that it occurred in a classroom, Fox said. Many occur outside a school building where students are unsupervised.
From 2010 through 2021, there were more than 800 school-related shootings in K-12 schools that involved 1,149 victims. Thirty percent of those occurred in the school building, said Fox, who published the 2010 book, “Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool Through College.”
“There are students who killed teachers, more typically high school students,” Fox said. “I don’t know of other cases where a 6-year-old shot a teacher.”
Depend on WTVR.com and watch CBS 6 News for the latest developments on this breaking story. Anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
