A six-year-old boy opened fire in an elementary school classroom in Virginia, a Southeastern U.S state on Friday, January 7th.
According to the report made by the local Police Chief, Steve Drew, the incident happened at Richneck Elementary School, the teacher was seriously injured, but the students weren’t hurt.
“The individual is a six-year-old student, he is right now in police custody,” chief Steve Drew told a news conference, adding that “this was not an accidental shooting.”
The 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.
“We need the community’s support to make sure that guns are not available to youth.”
School shootings plague the United States, with recent tragedies including the killing of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas in last May, 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-defence, and half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.