The six-year-old student who shot his teacher in the US earlier this year, boasted about the incident saying “I shot [her] dead”, unsealed court documents show.
While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.
His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner - who survived - filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.
The boy has not been charged.
The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child.
In Ms Zwerner’s lawsuit, filed in April, she accuses school officials of gross negligence for ignoring warning signs and argues the defendants knew the child "had a history of random violence
The documents also mention another incident with the same student while he was in kindergarten. A retired teacher told police he started “choking her to the point she could not breathe”.
It’s amazing to me how focused these comments are on the child being “evil” and not the environment that created this situation. A child isn’t born believing that shooting their teacher is a viable solution to their problems. At 6 years old you’re barely functional. For this to happen they had to exist in a profoundly fucked up environment with no moral compass and access to a lot of information, presented without good context, far above their age. Everyone responsible for raising this kid should be held responsible.
This kid needs years of therapy and support and a loving caregiver. Before the age of 10 children are incredibly impressionable and still undergoing very basic core development, until the age of 25 people are still in development to some level. There are many years ahead where this child can be saved from themselves. There is no reason to call a 6 year old irredeemable.
There are exceptions to every rule. Some kids are born evil, although you’re probably right that the parents suck too
I assure you, even though it is likely that the environment failed them, some kids are just plain evil and will require lifelong support. Parents arent always to blame.
Why do you think that some kids are just plain evil? I’m reading several comments stating this thing and it just baffles me, to say the least.
Because people aren’t born as a blank slate, although people seem to like that idea. Genetics play a huge role in personality and character. Some people are born without remorse. They need help and therapy like every other type of disability. But people are just too hung up on the idea of free will and virtuous character values to accept that our brains are organs that can have broken parts.
When you happen to cross paths with someone like that you will know. A kid I know is like this. He would hurt his younger brother to get attention and use other manipulation tactics (at 8 years old!). He will lie straight to your face and it’s just obvious he is very different from other children.
His mother had to stop working and basically 24/7 supervise this kid and the overall situation is nightmarish.
It can be both sadly. Some kids are born not right. But will usually be ok with good and professional follow up and loving parents. But there are some kids born without the ability to emphasize with others and that never will get the help they need. And they become terrifying in their teens.
Empathy is something that is taught. If some kid does not have the ability to have empathy for others, it’s likely because they were neglected/abused during childhood, and were not taught such a thing as empathy.
No, there really are people who are born without the capacity of compassion and empathy. They can learn to mimic it and live by the laws but it needs therapy and people who catch that there is a problem early enough.
It’s actually problematic that people immediately jump to the conclusion that the parents did a poor job, because it leads to people not getting adequate help. It also leads to parents not seeking help because they think they just need to be better at parenting when that’s often not going to change all that much.
Everything said above can be true in parts or at the same time. Obviously, this kid had access to a gun and shouldn’t have. Likely, the kid has other problems at home. Possibly, the kid has a neurological divergence that hadn’t been fully investigated.
Fuck the parent for not securing the gun. Fuck the school for not showing more caution. Fuck the teacher for getting shot… wait… (/s on the last one, of course)
But also, how can a kindergartener choke an adult to the point they can’t breathe? I’d think anyone who isn’t elderly could throw a child that age. I probably don’t have all the facts about that.
Because when you do not feel for other people you can go all in. Most people are not brutal and even unintentionally hold back against others. It is also really hard to defend against a child if you don’t want to hurt the child.
My neighbours kid broke one of his mother’s fingers at an age before he went to school (so he must have been 7 years old max). If you do not want to seriously hurt a child, how do you defend yourself when they won’t let go?
Having actually worked around troubled youth and seen literally 100’s of children move through the system, I don’t think you could be more wrong than you are. Prior to working with troubled youth I assumed it was more like 50/50 environment/genetics. I’m completely convinced it’s almost entirely environmental. In nearly 100% of the cases I’ve seen troubled children, they had parents that were doing something profoundly wrong. Whether it be neglect, violence, sexual abuse, etc, there was always something extremely concerning. I think it is actually incredibly rare for a child to end up severely messed up without extreme “help” from the parents getting there.
The problem with your anecdotal evidence is that what you experience can simply be the consequence of children only ending up in the system when they have a troublesome environment.