See here a report on the first day of the trial and here for the second day.
Dr. Clarence Watson, plaintiff’s witness
On October 30, the third day of the trial, Dr. Clarence Watson was called to the stand. Dr. Watson, a psychiatrist hired to evaluate Miss Zwerner’s emotional health, had met with her and examined her medical records, which included mental health records from before and after the shooting.
Dr. Clarence Watson, psychiatrist and expert witness
He said Miss Zwerner had come from a loving, supportive family background. There was no history of substance abuse, childhood neglect, domestic violence, or sexual assault.
As a college freshman in 2016, Miss Zwerner, feeling depressed and anxious, had once sought help from her family physician. Dr. Watson said that even with those symptoms, Miss Zwerner had remained functional. She did well in college, and she socialized and exercised regularly. In summer 2020, her father, a Newport News firefighter, had died suddenly and unexpectedly at home at age 56. Miss Zwerner received grief counseling afterwards but managed to cope, and she started her first teaching job at Richneck Elementary School that fall.
Dr. Watson said that Miss Zwerner, as a result of being shot, suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One way she meets the criteria for that diagnosis is that she had “exposure to threatened death, and serious injury.” Dr. Watson said while Miss Zwerner was lying on the floor bleeding, she believed that she was dying and that the shooter had been successful in killing her.
Miss Zwerner also has “recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories” of the shooting as well as “recurrent distressing dreams.” In particular, Miss Zwerner has nightmares about JT, the six-year-old student who shot her, especially about his facial expression as he pulled the trigger. She describes that expression as “a blank stare.” Miss Zwerner also has had nightmares about being alone in the school with JT chasing her, and she has had a nightmare with “gruesome imagery” that another student at the school was found dead. Dr. Watson said that while mentally healthy people look forward to sleep as a relief from their daily worries, a PTSD patient with nightmares cannot escape the traumatic event even in their sleep.
Dr. Watson explained that PTSD causes the body to enter a fear response, even when there is no reason to fear. For Miss Zwerner, seeing people with their hands in their pockets can trigger this fear response. She also needs to avoid being near the school where she worked, and she feels she needs to avoid crowds. These symptoms also fit the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis.
The shooting left Miss Zwerner with much mental turmoil. Dr. Watson said, “She has lost the feeling of being safe.” Her earlier problems with depression and anxiety were worsened by the shooting. Since the shooting, she has thought about suicide. She feels as though her life is out of control, and she lives with a great deal of uncertainty. PTSD has also affected her socially. She “felt fear in places where she didn’t feel fear before, like the grocery store.” She rarely wants to go anywhere; she won’t go to crowded public places without family or friends accompanying her.
Dr. Watson explained:
If she has to go with family and friends for support, that is not something that she needed to do before. She is not going to a concert in the way she would have gone to a concert before. She is experiencing hyper-arousal, where you become hyper-vigilant. You feel as if you are always in danger. You are always looking, always watching, always scanning. Scanning whether an individual near you might cause some harm. . . . Now you’re keying in on one person in the crowd instead of enjoying the concert.
Dr. Watson said that Miss Zwerner also sometimes experiences “numbness,” feeling nothing when she should feel emotional, which is a defense mechanism.
Miss Zwerner has also lost occupational functioning. “She doesn’t feel like she can go back to a classroom setting,” Dr. Watson said. “She doesn’t feel safe there. And one can imagine why. You’re sitting in a classroom of first graders; the last thing you’re going to expect is that one of them is going to pull out a gun and try to kill you.”
Overall, Dr. Watson believes Miss Zwerner has “clinically significant impairment,” both occupationally and socially.
One of the very important pieces about Miss Zwerner’s case is that she has everyday reminders, permanent physical scars reminding her of that particular day. So, it’s not just that she has psychological scars that she’s dealing with from the trauma; she has impairment in her normal functioning. She has injuries to her hand that changed the way she uses her body.
Abby Zwerner has received treatments for her PTSD that include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy. She has been prescribed anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication along with psychotherapy. Dr. Watson believes that Miss Zwerner is motivated to “get to a place of normalcy again.”
While cross-examining Dr. Watson, the defense team pointed out that Dr. Watson has not been providing mental health treatment to Miss Zwerner himself. He met with her twice, once in person and once on a team conference, for a total of six hours. He did not do any “collateral interviews” with her family members, boyfriend, or co-workers. He did not conduct any psychological testing or look at her social media.
Dr. Watson countered that he had access to very complete medical records, which he considered sufficient to make his evaluation.
Abby Zwerner, plaintiff
When Miss Zwerner was called to the stand, she told the court she was nervous. Asked about her teaching job, she said she had worked at Richneck Elementary for two and a half years. She taught fourth grade her first year and first grade the next two years. She said she liked it, in spite of the “ups and downs.”
Abby Zwerer on the witness stand
Recalling the events of January 6, 2023, she said that before recess, teacher Amy Kovac told her that two girls were claiming JT had a gun. Mrs. Kovac told her she was going to report this to the assistant principal, Dr. Ebony Parker. Miss Zwerner did not report this information to Dr. Parker personally, because she believed Mrs. Kovac had already done so. (Mrs. Kovac confirmed in her testimony on day one that she did inform Dr. Parker.)
Mrs. Kovac never identified the two girls who said JT had a gun, so Miss Zwerner did not question the girls herself. Because Mrs. Kovac, a teacher with much more experience than Miss Zwerner, told her to keep an eye on JT, she watched him and sent text messages about his behavior to Mrs. Kovac during recess.
Miss Zwerner’s lawyer, Diane Toscano, then asked her about the school’s handbook titled Classroom Management and Safety, a copy of which she kept in her classroom. That guide lists “Level 3 Behaviors” that should be reported immediately to either school security or an administrator. The school did not have security, so reporting to an administrator had been the only option. One of those behaviors is “possession of a weapon.”
Next, Miss Zwerner described the shooting itself. Her unease was obvious as she paused often while speaking, seeming to be having trouble putting her thoughts into words.
“The look on the student’s face is a large memory that I have,” Miss Zwerner said. “I do remember it was like a very blank look.”
When asked about the last thing she remembered after the shooting, Miss Zwerner answered, “I thought I was dying. I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to Heaven or in Heaven. But then it all got black, and so I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then, I see two co-workers around me, and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”
Miss Toscano asked, “Can you describe how it is with your left hand still? Things you can and can’t do to this day?”
Miss Zwerner then became so lost in her thoughts that she forgot to answer. Miss Toscano asked again. “Abby, can you tell the jury, when we have lunch together, are you able to open your potato chips or do I open your potato chips for you?”
Miss Zwerner said that she could not open the bag of chips after trying to do it several ways. She eventually gave up and asked her lawyer for help. She said, “It’s the same thing with water bottles. Overall, I would say I do struggle with doing things.”
Asked about how her relationships had been affected, she said, “I still feel connected and close, but there’s also that feeling of distance, a little numbness. I trust the person I’m with. I love them, I know them, but there’s something that’s just different. I can’t put it into words.”
Miss Zwerner described an example. At one point, she said, she and her mother and sister had planned to see the movie version of Hamilton. When the day came, she remembered that the show had a dueling scene with guns, and she suddenly did not want to go. “I felt like everything just came over my body and I remember I called my mom. . . . I remember crying a lot and I remember that afterwards, they were asking me what else I would want to do instead . . . and I remember telling them, ‘Nowhere. I can’t go anywhere. I just want to stay home.’ ”
Under cross-examination, Miss Zwerner was asked by Dr. Parker’s defense attorney if there was a phone in her classroom she could have used to call a parent if she needed to. Miss Zwerner said that she had never called a parent during the school day, but that she did have such a phone.
Asked if previously a student named “Q” had made her feel endangered and caused her to evacuate the classroom, Miss Zwerner remembered the child but said she had never evacuated her classroom.
The defense then brought up events that occurred two days before the shooting. The shooter, JT, had thrown Miss Zwerner’s cellphone to the floor, cracking the screen protector. Miss Zwerner took him to Mrs. West’s classroom across the hall. Mrs. West called the guidance counselor, Mr. Rawles, who removed the boy. JT was suspended for a day. When his mother brought him back to school on January 6, she apologized for her son’s behavior. JT apologized also and offered to pay for the screen protector.
By lunchtime, however, JT was misbehaving again, having threatened to beat up a kindergartener. Miss Zwerner stopped by the office to tell Dr. Parker. Miss Zwerner had not yet heard about a gun, learning about it only later from Mrs. Kovac. The defense attorney asked Miss Zwerner, “Did you go back to Dr. Parker and say, ‘There’s been a change. Now there’s a report that he might have a weapon?’”
Miss Zwerner answered, “No. Mrs. Kovac was in my room investigating the situation. She was observing the student, sitting next to the student. And at that time, I’m trusting Mrs. Kovac.”
The defense asked about several possible actions Miss Zwerner could have taken on the day of the shooting. She admitted that she did not remove JT from her classroom, nor did she question him herself, search his backpack, or personally inform an administrator. The defense pointed out that the Richneck school handbook says, “Discipline is the initial responsibility of the teacher.”
Both Dr. Watson and Miss Zwerner testified that she had become reclusive because of her PTSD. The defense tried to refute that claim by showing the jury a message that Miss Zwerner sent to Taylor Swift via Instagram, in which Miss Zwerner mentioned that she had attended one of Miss Swift’s Eras tour concerts, four months after the shooting. (Miss Swift did not respond.) Miss Zwerner sent a similar message to a band called Odesza after attending their show. The defense also pointed out that Miss Zwerner was interviewed on The Today Show.
The defense also tried to cast doubt on the extent of Miss Zwerner’s injuries and her lost occupational functioning by asking her about the cosmetology program she graduated from after she was shot. The defense attorney showed the jury a text message that Miss Zwerner had sent to a friend two years before the shooting: “Ugh I’m really not ready to teach If I quit I’d go to cosmetology school.”
Miss Zwerner insisted that she had not been serious about going to cosmetology school before she was shot.
The application form of her cosmetology school asked if there was anything that might prevent her from completing the program. She answered only: “part-time job at gym.”
The application form also listed the physical requirements of cosmetology work, which included arm-hand steadiness, manual dexterity, and so on. To be admitted into the program, Miss Zwerner avoided mentioning her physical limitations, and she managed to graduate. She did admit, however, that she was slow at cutting hair. When the defense showed photos of haircuts and dyes she had done, Miss Zwerner said that an instructor at the school had assisted her in some of the styling shown in the photos.
Miss Zwerner expressed pride in earning her cosmetology certification. She said it was “really hard. I had a lot of pain. I had a lot of help. But I did it.”
Although she has a license, she is currently unable to work as a cosmetologist because she has to wear a brace on her hand and has upcoming operations. She also has pain in her right hand, which was not shot, because she uses it so much to compensate for the lost dexterity in her left hand.
During redirect, Miss Toscano asked Miss Zwerner why she took the part-time job at the gym. She replied that she had had trouble facing the prospect of getting out of bed in the morning, and she thought having a job to go to would motivate her. She said, “I just wanted to feel like a person again.”
The day four installment will summarize the testimony of the defense witnesses.
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