In a compelling testimony, a former Virginia educator recounted the harrowing day in 2023 when a 6-year-old student shot her in her classroom, leaving her convinced she had lost her life.

Abby Zwerner took the stand in her $40 million lawsuit against a former assistant principal, alleging negligence in addressing repeated warnings about the student being armed.

The incident occurred in January 2023, when Zwerner was shot in her hand and chest while seated at a reading table in her first-grade classroom at Newport News’ Richneck Elementary School. Her injuries required nearly two weeks of hospitalization and six surgeries, resulting in the partial loss of mobility in her left hand. Remarkably, a bullet remains lodged in her chest.

“I believed I had passed away, thinking I was either heading to heaven or already there,” Zwerner shared during her testimony. “Everything turned black, and I doubted my destination. My next memory was seeing two colleagues tending to me, applying pressure on my wounds.”

The shocking event reverberated through the military shipbuilding town and across the nation, sparking deep concerns about how such a young child could gain access to a firearm and target their teacher.

Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court Wednesday that she has become a licensed cosmetologist.

Former assistant principal Ebony Parker is accused of failing to act after several people voiced concerns to her in the hours before the shooting that the student had taken a gun to school. Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal.

Parker faces a separate criminal trial next month on eight counts of felony child neglect. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison upon a conviction.

The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse.