Six-year-old boy arrested for shooting teacher at Newport News

A 6‑year-old boy has been arrest­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, after he shot and killed a teacher.

Police Chief Steve Drew said a shoot­ing occurred at Rich­neck Ele­men­tary School in New­port News just after 14:00 local time.

It’s unclear how the boy got the gun, but Drew said it was “not an acci­den­tal shot.”

A teacher in his 30s, whose name has not been released, was seri­ous­ly injured.

She was tak­en to a local hos­pi­tal and is under close cus­tody. The inci­dent occurred after an argu­ment between two stu­dents in a class­room of first graders (ages 6–7).

Drew stressed, how­ev­er, that the shoot­ing was an iso­lat­ed inci­dent and that offi­cers “were not in a sit­u­a­tion where some­one would walk around the school and shoot.”

Author­i­ties said the school, which has about 550 stu­dents, has met­al detec­tors, but stu­dents were screened at ran­dom and not all were checked.

Police declined to name the weapon used in the inci­dent, but said the boy used a gun.

School dis­trict prin­ci­pal Dr. George Park­er said author­i­ties would “inves­ti­gate any and all cas­es that may have led to this incident.”

“This should nev­er have hap­pened,” added Dr. Park­er. “I don’t want some­thing like this to hap­pen again”.

Schools will be closed on Mon­days and promised to pro­vide sup­port to stu­dents and their par­ents to help them cope with the trauma.

May­or Philip Jones, who took office just three days ago, said the shoot­ing rep­re­sent­ed “a dark day for New­port News.”

“We will learn from this and come back stronger,” he told reporters.

Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Glenn Youngkin said he had offered help to local author­i­ties, adding that the state gov­ern­ment “stands ready to help in any way it can.”

“I will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and wish all stu­dents and the com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty,” he wrote on Twitter.

New­port News is a city with a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 180,000 locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 112km south of the state cap­i­tal, Richmond.