A six-year-old student shot and wounded a teacher in Virginia during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom, police and school officials said. The teacher – a woman in her 30s – suffered life-threatening injuries. No students were hurt in the incident at Richneck Elementary School.
"The individual is a six-year-old student. He is right now in police custody," local police chief Steve Drew told a news conference, adding that "this was not an accidental shooting." However, it is unclear how the child obtained the gun,
6-Year-Old boy shoots teacher in US school
The incident took place in a first-grade (ages six to seven) classroom after an altercation between the pair.
But Drew emphasised that the shooting had been an isolated incident and stressed that officers "did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting".
Officials said that while the school - which has around 550 students - had metal detection facilities, students were checked at random and not every child was inspected.
Police declined to name the weapon used in the incident, but said the boy had used a handgun.
School District Head Dr George Parker said officials would "be looking at any instance that may have occurred that may have caused this incident".
"This is terrible, something like this should never occur," Dr Parker added. "We want to ensure nothing like this happens again."
School shootings plague the United States, with recent tragedies including the killing last May of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by an 18-year-old gunman.
There were an estimated 44,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of them murder cases, accidents and self-defence, and half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.
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