NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The mother of the 6-year-old student accused in the Richneck Elementary School shooting will have a plea hearing instead of a bench trial next month.
Deja Taylor is criminally indicted of felony child neglect and a misdemeanor charge of endangering a child by reckless storage of a firearm. Her bench trial was originally set for August 15 in Newport News Circuit Court, but on Friday, it was changed to a plea hearing on the same day.
A judge requested that Taylor's attorney, James Ellenson, submit paperwork for the plea by August 8.
Newport News police say her son shot first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner on January 6 inside her classroom at Richneck Elementary.
The charges came after an investigation by the Newport News Police Department and the city's Commonwealth's Attorney's Office. The office said it "determined that the facts and the law" support charges against Taylor for those two offenses.
Because of this change in hearings, Virginia Beach attorney and legal analyst Ed Booth said Taylor essentially waived her right to a trial.
"If you voluntarily give up your right to a trial, that's clear indication that there is going to be some kind of a plea of guilty," Booth explained.
Since the January shooting, Taylor told reporters she had the gun secured inside her home and she doesn't know how her son got ahold of her gun.
Investigators wrote in a "Statement of Facts" document regarding the search warrant they conducted that they found a firearm barrel lock inside the home, but they did not find a lockbox, a trigger lock, or a key to a trigger lock.
Booth said the judge will look to review any evidence that Taylor is guilty of the charges she faces.
"Because there has to be, for a guilty plea, some support for the plea," Booth said. "The Commonwealth's Attorney will have, in better practice, a written statement in the Stipulation of Facts signed by the defendant, but at a minimum, an oral recitation of the facts that would support the proof of guilt on the charge beyond the fact that the defendant is choosing to enter a guilty plea."
Booth said it's still up in the air how Taylor and her attorneys plan to go about this new plea, but he said it can go a couple of different ways before the August hearing.
"Once someone decides to enter a plea of guilty, they've either done so with an understanding of the CWA, in other words, what we call a plea bargain, or they may be pleading guilty in what people call 'straight up' in which they're going to accept responsibility and take their chances in what the sentence might be," Booth explained.
Following her indictment in April, she turned herself in at the Newport News City Jail but later posted $5,000 and was released on bond.
Taylor is also facing federal firearm charges of illegally obtaining and possessing a firearm and making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm. She pleaded guilty to the charges and is set to be sentenced on October 18.
Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn filed a motion to assign a special grand jury to this investigation to determine if anyone else should face charges related to the Richneck Elementary shooting.
In court Friday, Gwynn told 13News Now he is still waiting to hear back regarding a timeline of when the special grand jury would meet.