A former Virginia teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student in her classroom in 2023 testified on Thursday that she thought she had died that day.

Abby Zwerner testified in her US$40 million lawsuit filed against a former assistant principal who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the student had a gun.

Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

“I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to Heaven or in Heaven,” Zwerner testified.

“But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”