Teacher Abby Zwerner shows off scars for first time since being shot by 6-year-old student

Virginia teacher Abby Zwerner showed off for the first time the scars left on her hand after she was shot by her 6-year-old student last year — a terrifying moment that was the last time she saw her first-grade class.

The 26-year-old educator left her job at Richneck Elementary School shortly after a little boy fired the handgun he swiped from his mother’s purse, striking Zwerner in her classroom on Jan. 2, 2023.

“It’s still very hard for me to think about the last memory I have of them,” Zwerner told Pilot Online Wednesday — the one-year anniversary of the shooting and just weeks after the boy’s mother was sentenced to two years behind bars for child neglect.

“I just wonder about them,” she said, referring to her students. “I hope that they are enjoying school, enjoying their second grade year. I hope that they’re still kind to their classmates, kind to teachers. I hope that they still have happiness, and that their happiness wasn’t completely stripped away.”

Zwerner displayed the scar on the back of her left hand, where the bullet entered and exited before striking her chest and puncturing her lung.

She had been sitting at the classroom’s reading table when the student — whose mother claims “really liked” his teacher — pointed the gun at her and fired.

Since then, Zwerner has undergone five surgeries on the hand to revive her fine motor skills. While she has “progressed tremendously,” Zwerner noted she still wrestles with daily tasks.

Her hand “will never be 100%,” Zwerner said. “I struggle with picking things up … sometimes it’s still hard to do buttons.”

She has been dealing with a myriad of health issues in the year since the harrowing ordeal — including bullet fragments still lodged in her chest –– but said that the physical scars aren’t the only ones she has been left with.

“It’s always going to be there with me … and it’s always there in the back of my head,” Zwerner said.

“I’m not the same every day. I don’t have the same emotions every single day — or the same feelings, same thoughts every single day. So it’s a lot of good days or good moments, and also bad days or bad moments. … It’s a mix.”

Zwerner has previously spoken about her new struggles with anxiety in public spaces and of people hiding their hands in their pockets. She has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The uneasiness has become so ingrained in her daily life that it’s made it impossible for Zwerner to return to the classroom — robbing the young educator of her life’s passion.

Although she said she’d “love” to see her former students, Zwerner doesn’t see herself ever teaching again.

“It has a lot to do with the anxiety that comes with it,” she told the outlet.

“The PTSD that comes with it. The fear that comes with it when thinking about walking into a classroom, or even a school, or (being) a teacher in front of children. … So I know for now, at least, I am working on a new career path. That’s private for now.”

Zwerner is still in the midst of a $40 million lawsuit against the Newport News School Board, alleging administrators ignored multiple warnings the boy had a gun.

The school board has tried to block the lawsuit, arguing that Zwerner is eligible only for workers compensation under Virginia law, a move Zwerner described as “hurtful.”

A judge ruled in November that the lawsuit can proceed to trial, which the school board is in the process of appealing.

Meanwhile, the mother of the boy who shot Zwerner, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in December to two years in prison for felony child neglect.

Taylor, in November, was already sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for using marijuana while owning a firearm in connection to the shocking case.

Her son, now 7, is in a different school and in the care of his great-grandfather.