US: Mother of 6-year-old boy who shot teacher faces new federal charges

The mother of a six-year-old boy who has been accused of shooting and critically injuring his first-grade teacher in Virginia earlier this year is now facing two new federal counts, according to court records filed on Monday (June 5).

Deja Taylor is accused of making a false statement while purchasing a handgun and of taking a controlled substance illegally while in possession of a gun. Taylor was previously charged with child abuse and endangerment in April on felony counts, reported CBS News.

Taylor "knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement to Winfree Firearms," a gun shop in Grafton, Va., from which she purchased a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, court documents filed with the USDistrict Court for the Eastern District of Virginia allege.

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The documents also indicate that Taylor misrepresented her marijuana use on application forms submitted to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

On January 6, when she was seated at a reading table in her classroom, Abby Zwerner, a 25-year-old teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, was shot in the hand and the chest by a student. Since the incident, she has undergone four surgeries and spent over two weeks in the hospital.

The boy was not prosecuted in relation to the shooting, but his mother was, according to an indictment handed by a grand jury, charged with "felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm so as to endanger a child," Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn stated in April. According to WTVR, a CBS station, Taylor will go back to court in August to provide evidence for these allegations.

Police said that the youngster used his mother's lawfully acquired gun.

The gun, according to family members, was locked up. They also mentioned that the six-year-old child had an acute disability.

Zwerner filed a $40 million lawsuit against the school in April, charging administrators with willful disregard for repeated warnings that the student was armed and in a "violent mood"

America's perennial gun problem

In just the first few months of the year,shootings have frequently grabbed headlines.According to theGun Violence Archive, at least 13,959 people have died in the United States from gun violence as of May 1, 2023- or around 115 people each day on average.

The vast majority of deaths from gun violence this year have been suicides. In 2023, there were 66 suicide fatalities on average each day.

There have been 184 mass shootings in 2023 so far, which is defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed. These mass shootings have led to 248 deaths and 744 injuries.

The majority of these deaths have taken placein Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana.

Alabama became the most recent state in the United States to eliminate the requirement for a state permit that includes a background check to carry a concealed handgun.In simple terms, a person no longer needs a license to legally carry a concealed handgun in public as per this law.

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With this move, half of the 50 states in the US now let anyone carry handguns without a permit—a provision that was restricted to Vermont and Alaska 13 years ago.

As perCenters for Disease Control and Prevention firearm fatality data for 2020,the total number of deaths from firearm-related incidents in the US rose to 45,222 in 2020, the most the CDC has ever documented since it started keeping track of such deaths in 1968.This roughly translates to 124 individuals on average dying from gun violence each day.

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