The six-year-old student who shot his teacher in the US earlier this year, boasted about the incident saying “I shot [her] dead”, unsealed court documents show.
While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.
His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner - who survived - filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.
The boy has not been charged.
The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child.
In Ms Zwerner’s lawsuit, filed in April, she accuses school officials of gross negligence for ignoring warning signs and argues the defendants knew the child "had a history of random violence
The documents also mention another incident with the same student while he was in kindergarten. A retired teacher told police he started “choking her to the point she could not breathe”.
It’s amazing to me how focused these comments are on the child being “evil” and not the environment that created this situation. A child isn’t born believing that shooting their teacher is a viable solution to their problems. At 6 years old you’re barely functional. For this to happen they had to exist in a profoundly fucked up environment with no moral compass and access to a lot of information, presented without good context, far above their age. Everyone responsible for raising this kid should be held responsible.
This kid needs years of therapy and support and a loving caregiver. Before the age of 10 children are incredibly impressionable and still undergoing very basic core development, until the age of 25 people are still in development to some level. There are many years ahead where this child can be saved from themselves. There is no reason to call a 6 year old irredeemable.
It can be both sadly. Some kids are born not right. But will usually be ok with good and professional follow up and loving parents. But there are some kids born without the ability to emphasize with others and that never will get the help they need. And they become terrifying in their teens.
And their adulthood
It’s possible he really has no remorse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
I’d like someone more knowledgeable to confirm this, but I remember that kids cannot be diagnosed certain PDs, so I’m not sure that this can really apply to a child. Also, PDs more often than not derive from childhood problems.
This is somewhat true. I’m fairly knowledgeable about this topic (US) im pretty sure Children still cannot be officially diagnosed with a severe personality disorder until usually 14-18 depending on the state and the personality disorder. Usually it’s higher age brackets for more “severe” disorders like aspd. Yet weirdly low for add, adhd and odd. Depends mainly on state.
Many problematic children will be diagnosed with both odd and adhd /add at a young age and the moment they “age out” of youth services they’ll be immediately diagnosed with aspd or a whole bouquet of other DSM’s. This is one of my bigger pet peeves as parents are often left out of the loop pourpousefully simply as there is no “solution” to a child with such issues other than buttloads of money and time.
To add, as someone who has worked with children and children with behavioral issues. In multiple countries and cultures:
We usually know with like 80% certainty by the time the child is I’d say six or seven, roughly what is wrong with any given child, and can give pretty spot on diagnosis between ourselves. We are ofc not allowed to speak with parents regarding most of these issues, that’s a 5 minute talk between a child’s psychologist and its parents every six months. And Timmy just can’t sitt still for more than 20 minutes! It’s a disaster! But other than thst he’s a little angel!
Also, imagine telling a Karen her precious angel tried stabbed another kid with scissors?
Yeah I fucking stabbed her, I fucking stabbed the lil bitch in the face cause I fucking hate her fucking bitch"
And then two weeks later you almost loose your job, cause surprise. Timmy just stabbed the lil bitch in the FACE with Scissors. I know from the grapevine Timmy is now in a locked mental health juvie. Like. How do I explain. We all knew? All of us who ever worked with him told each other he was going to spend the rest of his life getting bailed out of jail by mommy and daddy, or dead, or 15-life. We knew he was dangerous. Deranged even. Why dosent anyone listen? Parents didn’t care, administration didn’t care. Hell the only people who seemed to actually care were us and the girls parents. (big and biggest Bitch)
It’s this shit + the metal detectors (+admin) that makes people like me charge 100$/h tutoring autistic kids now instead of working 50% and volunteering 50% at local school districts.
I am not a teacher. Just a giant guy who has always been good with kids. (I never stopped being one)
I dont think im intelligent enough to get into the nature vs nurture argument. It’s a doozy. My opinion is “why not both” I’ve seen both sides proven imo, a good nurture just gives you alot more tools to use.
Holy shit, that’s actually disastrous and not something that I could think of, so thank you so much for your insider input. Mustn’t be very nice knowing that something terrible has a good chance of happening and not being able to do anything about it.
and I agree with that, dismissing genetics completely also doesn’t feel convincing to me. The biggest takeaway that I wanted my comments to have is to keep an eye on the parents, as very often bad parenting bakes tragedies.
Correct. ASPD isn’t diagnosed until the child is 18. They usually will diagnose them with “conduct disorder” as a minor instead.
I assure you, even though it is likely that the environment failed them, some kids are just plain evil and will require lifelong support. Parents arent always to blame.
Yeah, but parents who leave loaded guns around where their six-year-olds can have access to them are probably to blame.
Why do you think that some kids are just plain evil? I’m reading several comments stating this thing and it just baffles me, to say the least.
Because people aren’t born as a blank slate, although people seem to like that idea. Genetics play a huge role in personality and character. Some people are born without remorse. They need help and therapy like every other type of disability. But people are just too hung up on the idea of free will and virtuous character values to accept that our brains are organs that can have broken parts.
When you happen to cross paths with someone like that you will know. A kid I know is like this. He would hurt his younger brother to get attention and use other manipulation tactics (at 8 years old!). He will lie straight to your face and it’s just obvious he is very different from other children.
His mother had to stop working and basically 24/7 supervise this kid and the overall situation is nightmarish.
Because my sibling was a psycho, and I doubt there is anything more my parents could have done. You have to get to know one (child or not) to understand that this exists not just in movies.
Sorry about your experience, I can imagine how terrifying this must be. I guess that there are many reasons why I (like others) am very skeptical about it being just nature, especially considering science doesn’t have a definitive answer to this (as far as I know). I know that genetics play a role in predicting future diagnoses. It’s just that having full blown personality disorders from childhood (especially when personality is something that you develop during childhood) sounds weird, and many people are labeled “bad” when it’s really a dark childhood that is running the scene.
Absolutely, I never met anyone else like that in my life. I assumed most people with bad behaviours had bad childhood, but I can’t deny knowing at least one person with a troubling disorder.
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People say things like this, then years later find out their siblings/demon kids in their lives were abused (sexually or no) by parents friends/distant relatives etc.
I don’t think people become psychopaths or develop extreme BPD out of nowhere. Like never.
You don’t believe in genetic mental illness? That one can be born with a sickness in the brain?
You don’t have to believe everyone on the internet, I can only offer you my slice of experience. Nothing wrong happened to my sibling. It was a child who actively tried to hurt people and kill stuff barely after learning to walk. It scared everyone for a while but medication and therapy helped turn they into a stable and functional adult. My sibling is also pretty open about it, at least with me.
I do believe a lot of our issues are genetic. But we also know different people with identical genetical “problems” will and won’t develop mental illnesses based on their environments and traumatic events in their lives. Epigenetics and all. Like schizophrenia. It was first purely genetic, now we’re pretty sure it’s also environment and experience led.
Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself some people are just naturally bad and thus undeserving of compassion. To some this is preferable to thinking that an impressionable child may be pushed to violence by their environment.
Never mind that the child was likely mimicking his father (who had attempted to murder his mother on several occasions) and was raised in the kind of environment where a loaded weapon was just left around for him to grab.
I mean, no offence, but you can use that line of reasoning to explain away literally anything.
“Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself all people are just naturally good, and thus can always be saved.”
I was born and raised with a psycho, I really wished for the longest time that my sibling was normal and just acting out. I guess having first-hand experience with a sick person will erase someone’s doubts real quick.
I’m not explaining away anything, nor denying that dangerously violent or even psychotic children exist. I was specifically railing against the idea of condemning a real, life human child because you have decided that they were “born bad”, in face of the plentiful evidence that they were raised in a violent environment.
For what it’s worth I’m sorry you had to go through that, but you’re not the only one who grew up with someone unstable and violent. I would not presume to speak to your experience, but in my case I was all too privy to the neglect and abuse they were put through and it’s left me convinced that barring any actual inborn neurological damage the only way a child turns violent is if something is pushing them to act that way.
I was not making a statement on the specific child in the article, I also mentioned that the environment is often the most important factor. I am just raising the fact that in some cases it can be a mental disorder, and it is not about deciding who is born bad, but assessing correctly every situation so you can do the greatest good, and protect yourself. I think we agree mostly, maybe my original comment could sound reductionist to some ears, but I tried my best to convey that I was pointing out a rare scenario, specifically to counter the arguments that you can’t have this sort of mental disorder at the time of birth. It is important to point out, otherwise innocent parents will get harmed (not those in the article, obviously)
Nobody is trying to invalidate your experience, but we also can’t take your story and assume it applies to a random child in the news that has nothing to do with your story.
Maybe not always, but nearly always. Which begs the question why people are so keen to blame a 6 year old kid here and not the parents? It feels to me like it’s just easier for people to simplify matters by blaming the person involved because the alternative is messy and complicated.
There are exceptions to every rule. Some kids are born evil, although you’re probably right that the parents suck too
True, but we have no idea if this child is a born psychopath or not. We do know they did something extremely depraved and were raised very poorly.
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None of that conflicts with the comment you replied to. You’re both correct.
Are you outing yourself?
The earliest years are where the individual gains their fundamental personality. This kid is toast, no matter what kind of treatment or assistance they receive. They weren’t born this way, but they’re now done for.