The 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot his first-grade teacher in the chest and later unleashed a profanity-filled, camera-captured tirade at another educator was never criminally charged in connection with the attack.
Instead, the child, identified by authorities only as J.T., was placed in inpatient psychiatric care for 227 days after shooting teacher Abby Zwerner in front of 16 classmates on Jan. 6, 2023, court records show.
Police body-camera video released this week captures the moments after the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, a city roughly 70 miles southwest of Richmond. The footage shows the boy cursing at officers and making threats shortly after opening fire in his classroom.
“Both y’all want a f–king piece of me, b—h?!” J.T. shouts at police in the video. Richneck reading specialist Amy Kovac can be seen holding him in a bear hug while repeatedly urging him to “stop.”
“F–k you, b—h,” the boy replies, according to the footage. Officers also locate a 9 mm Taurus handgun on the ground nearby.
“I stole that from my mom,” J.T. tells police, indicating the weapon he had taken from his mother’s purse earlier that morning.
During her conversation with officers, Kovac also refers to previous concerns involving the child’s behavior and school routine.
“He has been on a modified schedule. His mother is to pick him up at 2:30. This is his first week without his mother coming to school with him,” she says in the video.
J.T.’s mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, later served nearly two years in prison after pleading guilty to felony child neglect in Virginia and federal firearms charges. The federal case was partly tied to her falsely reporting marijuana use on the background-check form she completed when purchasing the handgun used in the shooting.
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Court proceedings in the case also revealed troubling details about J.T.’s life before the school shooting.
When he was 5, prosecutors said, J.T. twice took his mother’s keys without permission and drove her car alone. One of those incidents ended in a crash.
The boy’s parents also had their own histories with law enforcement.
Prosecutors alleged that one month before J.T. carried the gun into school, Taylor, now 29, fired it during an argument with the child’s father, Malik Ellison. No one was injured.
Police records obtained by WAVY News show that Taylor later sought a protective order and filed multiple reports against Ellison. She and at least one other woman accused him of physical abuse.
Taylor was released from prison in February. J.T., meanwhile, remains in the care of his great-grandfather, who has argued that child-welfare authorities failed to protect the boy well before the shooting.
“He was a victim before that date,” Calvin Taylor told the outlet in January 2024.
“Contrary to popular belief, I know they said that my granddaughter neglected him and placed him in precarious situations, but there were instances where she tried to get help. I drove her to certain places. My other daughters drove her to places to acquire help, even the safety plan that they put in place after the car incident. There was no follow-up,” he said.
At the time of that interview, Calvin Taylor said J.T. was earning strong grades at his new school and beginning to accept responsibility for the shooting, which left Zwerner with wounds to her hand and chest.
“I’m grateful that I have an opportunity to spend time with him daily and that I have an opportunity to watch him grow up as a young man without a lot of baggage. I’m also grateful that he understands that it was an egregious mistake and that he’s not going to be defined by that mistake,” he said.
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