Six-year-old boy found with loaded handgun at Virginia school weeks after teacher shot

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A mother is facing charges after her six-year-old brought a loaded handgun to his school in Virginia.

Police responded to Little Creek Elementary School in Norfolk on Thursday afternoon after receiving a call about a student with a weapon, the Virginian-Pilot reported.

A school staff member disarmed the student and turned the gun over to police. No one was injured.

The child’s mother was subsequently charged with allowing access to a loaded firearm by children and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Neither the child nor the mother have been named publicly.

The incident came weeks after a six-year-old student shot his teacher in a classroom in Newport News.

First-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner, 25, was critically wounded in the shooting at Richneck Elementary School on 6 January. She spent two weeks in the hospital and has since returned home to continue her recovery.

Local police are still weighing whether to charge the parents in that incident, after determining the gun belonged to the child’s mother.

Parents of other students at Richneck Elementary are reportedly preparing to take legal action against the school for inflicting emotional trauma on their children.

A notice of potential legal action filed last week states that at least three teachers and staff members warned administrators that they believed the boy had brought a gun to school several hours before the shooting.

No gun was found during a search of the boy’s backpack. However, the filing argues that administrators should have taken further action as they failed to remove the boy from class, call police or lock down the school.