Virginia: According to police, a six-year-old child intentionally shot a teacher at an elementary school in Virginia on Friday afternoon, the Guardian reported.
The young child accused of shooting a female teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, a city in the state's southeast, has been detained, according to police.
According to police, they learned about 2 pm that the teacher had been shot within the school following some sort of argument.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Newport News police chief Drew told reporters. “We have a situation in one particular location where a gunshot was fired.”
The shooting, he said, was not an accident.
The teacher, a woman in her 30s, was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for injuries that were "believed to be life-threatening," according to the police department. The student was later taken into custody. By late afternoon, according to Drew, the teacher's condition had slightly improved.
He made no mention of the specifics of how the youngster is believed to have obtained the firearm used in the shooting. However, the chief informed reporters that as officers processed evidence still present at the gunshot scene, students on the campus had been relocated to the school gymnasium where they were "safe."
Additionally, Drew mentioned that there were "plenty of counsellors" working with the youngsters to try and keep their calm.
“The number one priority … is to get all our students back with their parents,” he said.
According to a police statement, officers had divided the youngsters by grade level as part of a procedure to reunite them with their parents.
“An officer and a school official are walking the student to their parents, so it’s a good happy reunion, a little bit of emotion, but everything right now is safe,” Drew said.
Even though Congress passed a bill last year that tightened limitations on access to firearms for some persons who are seen to be at risk of committing violence, Friday's massacre will almost surely fuel debate about curbing public access to guns in the US.
The shooting deaths of 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and 21 people at a school in Uvalde, Texas, were two high-profile incidents of gun violence that occurred across the US last year.