by Molly Amman

Welcome back to “The TAB,” a publication that curates relevant-right-now developments in behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) that I think are most worth your attention. Thanks for checking it out, and if you like it please consider sharing with your networks.

Every other Thursday, a new issue of the TAB will arrive with operationally useful updates for professionals in BTAM. Every issue is researched, written, and edited by me. No AI-generated articles and no recycled summaries—just my assessment of what matters and why. And it’s free to subscribe.

This week, I’m diving into the recent dismissal of criminal charges—smack in the middle of the trial—against the assistant principal of Richneck Elementary School in Virginia, USA, related to a six-year-old student shooting his teacher, Abby Zwerner, in 2023. The dismissal, which took many by surprise, was ordered by the trial court following the prosecution’s case-in-chief. The judge ruled from the bench, which she wasn’t expecting to do, resulting in a less detailed explanation than one would normally get. Anticipating that this could become a source of confusion about whether as a school employee “can” be prosecuted in relation to a school shooting, I caution against reading too much into the outcome.

First of all, there’s no appellate ruling here. No law was made in the sense of some kind of precedent. Second, I think what was likely the prosecution’s principal mistake is avoidable in future cases. And with respect to more minor issues, it’s conceivable that a different judge could have taken a different view and let the case go to the jury.

First, let’s back up to what happened leading up to and on January 6, 2023, according to a special grand jury report and evidence at trial. In very succinct summary:

The first grader, JT, had a lengthy history of aggression and other behavioral problems including an assault on a prior teacher, of which Assistant Principal Parker, his current teacher Abby Zwerner, and others at the school were aware. In fact, it got bad enough that he was removed from school the year before and didn’t finish kindergarten.

Earlier on the day she was shot, 25-year-old Zwerner saw that JT was acting strangely and in a violent mood. She went to Dr. Parker’s office to tell her so. Zwerner also raised the possibility that JT might hit her. Parker looked at her but didn’t answer, so Zwerner went back to her classroom. Dr. Parker later told another teacher to relay to Zwerner that she could send JT to the office if needed.

After that, multiple frightened students told multiple teachers that JT had a gun—all reported to Parker. A teacher searched JT’s backpack during recess, found no weapons, and conveyed that to Parker, as well. At that very moment, JT was outside at recess where playground teachers were watching him keeping both hands firmly in the pockets of an oversized jacket and generally acting suspiciously. Parker was informed that staff believed JT had the gun in his jacket pocket. After recess, he kept the jacket on as he went back to class. 

The school’s crisis management plan called for a search of a student if the school had reason to believe they had a firearm. Nevertheless, when a school counselor asked Dr. Parker if they could search JT’s person as well as his bag, Dr. Parker declined to authorize it. Instead, she decided to wait for his mother to pick him up and discuss it with her. (JT was on a modified schedule and his mother was due “soon.”) Minutes later, JT shot Zwerner in the chest in front of his classmates.

After the shooting, a special grand jury was convened to investigate the incident and identify any system or security failures that may have contributed. It ultimately indicted Parker for eight instances felony child neglect—one indictment for each bullet that had been in the gun. As I’ll explain below the fold, this indictment structure and something called the unit of prosecution doctrine were very likely the main issue leading to dismissal.

Note: even if this case had gone to the jury, there is no way to know what the jurors’ verdict would have been. All defendants in the U.S. are legally innocent until proven guilty, and therefore Dr. Parker is innocent of the charged crimes.

Elders (aged 65+) make up about 10% of the global population today. In 50 years, that number is projected to double—to the tune of about 2.2 billion elders. I haven’t thought as much as I probably should about older adult abuse (OAA) in my targeted violence work, but population trends are likely to keep nudging OAA toward the fore. As a distinct form of violence, OAA-specific risk factors have been examined across 198 studies and 52 systematic literature reviews. The data on risk factors are at a point where assessing its risk in individual cases can now be empirically supported. 

For readers with health care systems, nursing and rehabilitation centers, social services, or otherwise have a portfolio with elders as a population, this matters for you. Screening tools for OAA abound, and they’re great for helping to identify if abuse is occurring. But they can’t pinpoint risk level or guide an assessor toward appropriate management strategies. That’s where a good risk assessment tool comes in. Readers of the TAB know that unstructured clinical judgment is basically no better than chance at correctly predicting violence. 

This peer-reviewed case study came out recently about the Harm to Older Persons Evaluation (HOPE), formerly the Elder Abuse Risk Level Index, created by Storey, Hart and Kropp. The HOPE uses a structured professional judgment process to assess the presence or absence of evidence-supported risk factors in four domains. I was easily able to follow along with the case study as it applied the HOPE, and readily understood its logic and applicability. What caught my attention was that the case study is a real case, albeit anonymized; the abuse wasn’t recognized IRL while it was happening despite the presence of various professionals in the situation, yet the risk pretty clearly stood out in a retrospective HOPE analysis. 

Here’s how it works:

Overall, this is not an overly complicated model and anyone can use it—there are no requisites in terms of profession or licensing. That said, an important caveat is in order: the HOPE is still pending validation. It appears thoughtfully developed with appropriate theoretical grounding, but of course we ultimately want the scientific testing data. Encouragingly, a team in the Netherlands appears to be working on it now, and I look forward to their results. 

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