A six-year-old boy opened fire in an elementary school classroom in the eastern U.S. state of Virginia on Friday, seriously injuring a teacher, police said.
No students were hurt in the incident at Richneck Elementary School in the coastal city of Newport News.
Washington, United States: A six-year-old boy opened fire in an elementary school classroom in the eastern US state of Virginia on Friday, seriously injuring a teacher, police said https://t.co/0x1Ti6I0yc#DialoguePakistan #Washington #UnitedStates #ElementarySchool #Teacher pic.twitter.com/dgWwB69gLd
— Dialogue Pakistan (@DialoguePak) January 7, 2023
"The individual is a six-year-old student. He is right now in police custody," local police chief Steve Drew told a news conference, adding that "this was not an accidental shooting."
Police said that the victim was a teacher in her 30s and her injuries were believed to be life-threatening.
"I'm in shock, and I'm disheartened," said the city's superintendent of schools, George Parker.
A six-year-old boy opened fire in an elementary school classroom in US' Virginia on Friday, seriously injuring a teacher in her 30s, police said. While no student was injured at Richneck Elementary School, police said the incident was "not an accidental shooting". pic.twitter.com/AL5ybymgST
— Syed Faiz Abbas (@Faizabdii) January 7, 2023
"We need the community’s support to make sure that guns are not available to youth," he added.
School shootings plague the United States, with recent tragedies including last May, when 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, were killed by an 18-year-old gunman.
There were an estimated 44,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of them murder cases, accidents and self-defense, and half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.
(AFP)
