The mother of a six-year-old American student who seriously injured his school teacher was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for parental neglect by the courts of the state of Virginia.
Already Taylor, 26, had already been sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for illegal possession of a firearm.
The judge in Newport, Virginia, in the eastern United States, “considered that the circumstances justified a sentence greater than the maximum six months firm provided for by state guidelines,” according to a press release from local judicial authorities .
He therefore sentenced the defendant to five years in prison, two of which were closed, in addition to the 21 months in prison at the federal level, “the two sentences to be served consecutively”.
His son brought a gun to his school in Virginia on January 6 and shot his teacher. The teacher, injured in the hand and chest, was hospitalized for two weeks.
Deja Taylor pleaded guilty in June to illegally obtaining a firearm and making a false statement on a government form required to purchase a weapon by assuring that he did not use illegal drugs.
Faced with the number of gun deaths involving minors, pressure is mounting in the United States to punish parents who, often through negligence, allow access to these weapons.
Last week, an American teenager, tried as an adult although he was 15 years old at the time of the facts, was sentenced to life in prison for having killed four students in his high school in 2021 with a weapon offered by his parents in Michigan (north).
Rarely, his parents, accused of negligence and of having ignored the warning signs of his act, were charged with manslaughter.
