


The mother of the 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot his teacher will cooperate fully with law enforcement after being charged with felony child neglect and recklessly leaving a firearm so as to endanger a child, her lawyer said.
Deja Taylor, 25, was indicted by a grand jury Monday over the Jan. 6 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia.
Her son shot first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner, who has since recovered but is suing the school for $40 million dollars.
Prosecutors ruled out charging the child, but Taylor was slapped with charges three months after the shocking incident. Taylor, who legally purchased the firearm her son used in the shooting, faces up to six years in prison if she’s convicted of all the charges.
“Deja has cooperated from the first day of the incident,” her lawyer James Ellenson told The Daily Press. “Most criminal prosecutions are adversarial in nature, but we will make our best efforts so that these proceedings will be more collaborative than most.”
Ellenson said the priority “is the continued health and wellbeing of all persons involved in the incident at Richneck Elementary School, including the teacher and Deja’s son.”
Taylor is set to turn herself in sometime this week, her lawyer said. Prosecutors are asking for her bail to be set at $5,000.
“This is a good first step towards a just resolution of the charges,” Ellenson said.
Prosecutors claim she showed a “reckless disregard for human life” by allowing her child to access the weapon he used to shoot Zwerner, 25. The bullet went through the teacher’s hand and into her chest.
“I remember him pointing the gun at me, I remember the look on his face, I remember the gun going off,” Zwerner said last month on NBC’s “Today” show. “That’s something that I will never forget. It’s changed me. It’s changed my life.”