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”.
I’m not explaining away anything, nor denying that dangerously violent or even psychotic children exist. I was specifically railing against the idea of condemning a real, life human child because you have decided that they were “born bad”, in face of the plentiful evidence that they were raised in a violent environment.
For what it’s worth I’m sorry you had to go through that, but you’re not the only one who grew up with someone unstable and violent. I would not presume to speak to your experience, but in my case I was all too privy to the neglect and abuse they were put through and it’s left me convinced that barring any actual inborn neurological damage the only way a child turns violent is if something is pushing them to act that way.
I was not making a statement on the specific child in the article, I also mentioned that the environment is often the most important factor. I am just raising the fact that in some cases it can be a mental disorder, and it is not about deciding who is born bad, but assessing correctly every situation so you can do the greatest good, and protect yourself. I think we agree mostly, maybe my original comment could sound reductionist to some ears, but I tried my best to convey that I was pointing out a rare scenario, specifically to counter the arguments that you can’t have this sort of mental disorder at the time of birth. It is important to point out, otherwise innocent parents will get harmed (not those in the article, obviously)