School where 6-year-old shot teacher shut all week

The US primary school where a six-year-old child shot a teacher on Friday is to remain closed all week.

In a statement, the Virginia school said this was to give its students and families “time to heal”.

The teacher, Abby Zwerner, said to be 25, was left seriously injured; she is now in a stable condition, said Richneck Elementary School, and talking to family and friends.

It is unclear how the child – who is in police custody – obtained the gun.

Officials said that while the school – which has about 550 pupils and is in the city of Newport News – had metal detectors, pupils were checked at random and not every child was inspected.

Police have declined to say what might have motivated the shooting. But Chief Steve Drew told reporters it come after an “altercation” in a first grade (ages six to seven) classroom and did not appear to be “accidental”.

A pupil at the school – Novah Jones, who is in fifth grade and was in a different classroom – described the moment her class was locked-down.

“We were doing math… an announcer came on, she was like: ‘Lockdown, I repeat lockdown,'” she told CNN.

“I was scared… it was like my first lockdown and I didn’t know what to do, so I just hid under my desk like everybody was.”

Initially, she thought there was a man with a gun inside the school. She was later evacuated from her classroom and taken to the gymnasium before going home.

Newport News is a city of around 180,000 people and sits about 70 miles (112km) south-east of the state capital Richmond.