A six-year-old boy has been arrested by police after he shot and killed a teacher in Virginia, officials say.
The shooting happened just after 2:00 p.m. local time (19:00 GMT) at Richneck Elementary School in the city of Newport News, Chief Steve Drew said.
It’s unclear how the child got hold of the gun, but Mr Drew said the incident was not an “accidental shooting”.
The unnamed teacher, who is said to be in her 30s, suffered life-threatening injuries.
She was taken to a local hospital and is being closely monitored by doctors. The incident happened after an altercation between the two in a first grade (ages 6 to 7) classroom.
However, Mr Drew stressed that the shooting was an isolated incident, stressing that officers “have not had a situation where anyone circumvented the school shooting”.
Officials said that while the school – which has about 550 students – had metal detection facilities, students were randomly screened and not every child was inspected.
Police declined to name the weapon used in the incident but said the boy used a handgun.
The head of the school district, Dr. George Parker said officers would “review every case that may have arisen that may have caused this incident.”
“This is terrible, something like this should never happen,” added Dr. Parker added. “We want to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
He said the school would close on Monday and promised support would be offered to students and parents to help them deal with the traumatic event.
Mayor Phillip Jones, who took office just three days ago, said the shooting was “a dark day for Newport News.”
“We will learn from this and come back stronger,” he told reporters.
Newton News is a city with around 180,000 inhabitants and is located about 112 km south of the state capital Richmond.
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