NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Two Newport News students are suing the Newport News school division and former superintendent Dr. George Parker III for the shooting at Heritage High School in 2021.
In the 2021 shooting, a student at the school fired a gun inside a crowded hallway, hurting two other students.
They're asking for a combination of more than $11 million in the lawsuit.
The liability claims are the latest in a series of lawsuits against the school division over a number of shootings on school property over the past few years. Earlier this year, two Newport News Public Schools teachers sued the school division for a combination of more than $4 million.
The students' lawsuits allege when the 15-year-old shooter fired multiple rounds inside a crowded hallway, the two students in the lawsuit were rushed to safety inside their classrooms.
One student said she ran to the closet inside a classroom with a group of other students, getting elbowed and accidentally getting hit in the head as they all crammed into the closet.
The other student said she wedged herself between the closet and filing cabinet to take cover, after also saying she was struck by other panicked students.
Both lawsuits state the school did not appear to have a safety plan; students waited nearly 45 minutes for law enforcement to arrive.
The attorney representing the students wrote in the lawsuit that the school division enrolled the shooter while knowing he had a prior malicious wounding conviction.
However, the school division's attorneys wrote back in a court document, stating the student who caused the shooting was not enrolled at the high school at the time of his prior offense.
The shooter is now serving time in a juvenile detention program.
The Newport News school board voted to fire Dr. George Parker III from his position as superintendent earlier this year, just a couple of weeks after the shooting of a teacher at Richneck Elementary School.