Newly Released Bodycam Footage Reveals 6-Year-Old’s Hostile Post-Shooting Behavior During Virginia School Shooting Incident

Body camera footage from the January 2023 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, was unsealed by court order on Oct. 6, 2026, after being withheld for more than three years.

The video, recorded by Newport News Officer Brian Torrez and obtained by The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, captures the immediate aftermath of a 6-year-old student who was later identified in court records only as J.T. due to shooting his first-grade teacher, Abby Zwerner. When officers entered the classroom, reading specialist Amy Kovac was holding the boy in a bear hug.

The footage is difficult to watch. The boy directs profanity at Kovac and at the responding officers, dares them to fight him, and tells one officer where the gun is. He admits he took the weapon from his mother. Kovac initially told officers there was one bullet; the handgun had in fact jammed with additional rounds still loaded.

Zwerner was struck in the hand, with a large fragment lodging in her chest not far from her heart

5. She survived but suffered lasting injuries, testifying in a civil trial that she thought she had died. After helping evacuate her students, she passed out in a school office while trying to get help.

Last year a jury awarded Zwerner $10 million in her civil suit against former assistant principal Ebony Parker, who allegedly failed to act on warnings that the boy may have brought a firearm to school . Prosecutors introduced the bodycam video during Parker's own criminal trial in May 2026; those charges were dismissed that same month