Mother of 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher Gets Prison

The mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison for using marijuana while owning a firearm, which is prohibited by federal law. Deja Taylor's son took her handgun to school and shot Abby Zwerner in her first-grade classroom in January, seriously wounding the educator. Investigators later found nearly an ounce of marijuana in Taylor's bedroom and evidence of frequent drug use in her text messages and paraphernalia. Taylor's sentencing in a US District Court offered the first measure of accountability for January's shooting, the AP reports, which revived a national dialogue about gun violence and roiled the city of Newport News.

Taylor, 26, still faces a separate sentencing in December on the state level for felony child neglect. And Zwerner is suing the school system for $40 million, arguing that administrators ignored multiple warnings the boy had a gun. Federal prosecutors had sought a 21-month prison sentence. "This case is not a marijuana case," they wrote. "It is a case that underscores the inherently dangerous nature and circumstances that arise from the caustic cocktail of mixing consistent and prolonged controlled substance use with a lethal firearm." Taylor agreed in June to a negotiated guilty plea. She also was convicted of lying about her drug use on a federal form when she bought the gun.

Taylor's attorneys argued she needs counseling for issues that include schizoaffective disorder, a condition that shares symptoms with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Taylor's grandfather has had custody of her son, now age 7, since the shooting, according to court documents. Her lawyers wrote that Taylor is "completely remorseful for the unintended consequences and mistakes that led to this horrible shooting." Her son told authorities he obtained the gun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mother's purse. Immediately after the shooting, the child told a reading specialist who restrained him: "I shot that (expletive) dead," and "I got my mom's gun last night," according to search warrants.

(More school shooting stories.)