6-Year-Old Shoots Teacher In A Classroom

Officials say that a 6-year-old student shot an elementary school teacher in a Virginia first-grade classroom on Friday. The teacher has injuries that could kill her. The student is in custody.

Police say that no kids were hurt at Newport News, Virginia's Richneck Elementary School.

"A 6-year-old, the student who had the gun, and the teacher got into a fight," Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said. "This wasn't a shooting mistake."

Drew said that they got a call about the shooting around 2:00 p.m., and the police came "within minutes." He said that the community is not in danger all the time.

"No one was going around the school while the shooting was going on. "There was a situation where a gunshot was fired in one place," Drew said at a press conference.

Drew said that the handgun the student used will be one of the things that will be looked into further: "I want to know where that gun came from."

He said that the child was still in the care of the authorities as of Friday night while they figured out what services he would need and how to handle the situation.

At a press conference, Mayor Phillip Jones said, "It's a dark day for Newport News, but we'll learn from this and come back stronger."

Joselin Glover, whose son is in the fourth grade, told The Virginian-Pilot that she got a text from the school saying that one person had been shot and another was in custody.

She said, "My heart stopped." "I was scared out of my mind. I just wanted to know if that person was my son."

Carlos, who was 9 years old, was playing at recess. But he said that he and his classmates soon hid in the back of a classroom.

Carlos told the newspaper, "Most of the class was crying."

Superintendent George Parker said that Richneck students will not have school on Monday while the town deals with the aftermath of the crisis.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Newport News is a city with more than 185,000 people. It is about 40 miles from both Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. People know it as a place where ships for the U.S. Navy were built.