NEWPORT NEWS — The mother of the 6-year-old shooter at Richneck Elementary School pleaded guilty Monday to federal gun and marijuana charges.
Deja Nicole Taylor, whose son shot 25-year-old Abby Zwerner in her first-grade classroom on Jan. 6, pleaded guilty in Newport News federal court to a felony charge of having a firearm while also possessing marijuana.
Taylor, 25, also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying on a federal background check form when she bought the gun, saying she wasn’t a weed user when she really was.
Though several states have moved to legalize marijuana in recent years — including Virginia in 2021 — the drug remains illegal under federal law.
The charges carry a maximum prison term of 25 years, but prosecutors have agreed to ask for a sentence of no more than two years. Federal sentencing guidelines, which are discretionary on judges, call for a sentence of 18 to 24 months.
“This does not bound the sentencing judge,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Miller told Taylor at the hearing. “The court can impose the sentence above or below the guideline range if it wants to.”
Miller’s comments came after the prosecution and defense disagreed over whether the plea deal would lock the sentencing judge to a two-year cap. While the defense wanted a hard cap, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lisa McKeel and Peter Osyf held firm that while they wouldn’t ask for more than two years, the judge could go higher if he saw fit.
The disagreement caused a recess of about 40 minutes as lawyers discussed the issue, and it appeared at first to jeopardize the entire plea agreement.
One of Taylor’s attorneys, James Ellenson, told Miller after the recess that the case might need to go to trial. “We may have to try this because I don’t think we have a meeting of the minds,” he told the judge.
But Eugene Rossi, another of Taylor’s lawyers with the Washington firm of Carlton Fields, put his arm around Taylor and whispered in her ear for several moments, apparently urging her to go forward with the deal even without the hard cap. Taylor nodded, then went back to the podium and pleaded guilty to both charges.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark S. Davis will sentence Taylor on Oct. 18.
“I think we’re going to get a very fair shake,” Rossi told the media after the hearing. “I really believe at the end of the day, Deja Taylor will get justice and compassion.”
“Ms. Taylor’s role in this tragedy is a complete accident and a complete mistake,” he said. “However, she takes full responsibility for her son’s actions and will feel guilt for the rest of her life.”
A statement of facts admitted to by both sides Monday spent several pages establishing that Taylor was a heavy marijuana user — including when she bought the 9mm Taurus handgun that her son took to school six months later and shot Zwerner in a first-grade classroom.
The statement said that federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF, found “copious amounts of marijuana” and related items in their investigation. That included in Taylor’s purse, bedrooms at two homes and a trash bag that had been taken from her car.
But when she bought the Taurus PT111 handgun at Winfree’s Firearms, on Route 17 in York County, on July 19, 2022, Taylor checked off a box on a federal background form saying she was not an “unlawful user” of marijuana or other illegal drugs.
That was a lie, the statement of facts says.
“Taylor admits that she was a daily user of marijuana and marijuana products for approximately 11 years,” the statement said. “The defendant admits that her chronic use of marijuana was not recreational, and it affected her behavior.”
A search of Taylor’s cellphone messages “illustrated the pervasive scope of Taylor’s marijuana use,” the statement added.
Moreover, the statement of facts calls into question assertions that Ellenson previously made about how Taylor stored the weapon safely.
Taylor has maintained through Ellenson that she kept the gun secured by a trigger lock, a mechanism that prevents the weapon from being fired. She also asserted that the handgun was stored on the top shelf of a bedroom closet, out of the child’s reach.
But “a lockbox was not found” in Taylor’s bedrooms at either her mother or grandfather’s house, the statement of facts said. “Nor was a trigger lock or key to a trigger lock ever found.” On the other hand, a gun “barrel lock” was among the items Taylor’s grandfather retrieved from Taylor’s car when it broke down a few weeks before the shooting.
Ellenson on Monday declined to comment on the apparent discrepancy between the statement and what he’s said previously.
But Diane Toscano, one of Zwerner’s attorneys in a pending civil lawsuit against the school system, said the defense lawyer’s prior statement that the gun was properly secured “defied common sense.”
“Now we know it also defied the evidence,” she said in a written statement.
The statement of facts also delves heavily into an April 2021 traffic stop in which a car Taylor was driving was pulled over for speeding in Williamsburg.
After the Pontiac was stopped on Richmond Road, an officer walked up to the car and “detected an overwhelming odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle.”
Aside from Taylor, another adult was in the car, as was her then-4-year-old son.
“Marijuana was in plain view inside the vehicle, so the officer conducted a search of the vehicle,” the statement of facts said. Directly next to the boy “were several marijuana edibles that looked like rice treats.” The adult’s backpack contained “suspected crack cocaine,” two large bags of marijuana, oxycodone pills and more.
“Taylor’s purse was searched, and marijuana edibles and three unknown white pills were found,” the statement added.
After the Richneck shooting, ATF agents executed a search warrant on Jan. 19 at the Newport News home Taylor and her son lived in with her grandfather.
Though Taylor had moved out Jan. 6 to go to live with her mother, police found suspected weed and narcotics packaging in Taylor’s bedroom at her grandfather’s place.
The grandfather also gave investigators trash bags with items he removed from Taylor’s car when it broke down weeks earlier. Aside from the gun barrel lock, that also include a box of ammunition and “a jar of suspected marijuana.”
ATF agents then searched Taylor’s mother’s home, also in Newport News. They found 24.5 grams of marijuana in Taylor’s bedroom, in addition to packages for edibles, Dutch Master cigar wraps, plastic bags and burnt marijuana cigarettes, the statement said.
Taylor wouldn’t have been prosecuted under state law for the amount of weed found in the bedroom.
When lawmakers legalized marijuana in Virginia in 2021, they said it was legal to possess an ounce — or 28.3 grams — or less. But Taylor’s purse also turned up “a glass jar with suspected marijuana, marijuana paraphernalia, used marijuana cigarettes and marijuana packaging material.”
Miller accepted Taylor’s guilty pleas as being freely made and backed by the evidence. In considering her bond conditions, Miller allowed Taylor, who has no criminal record, to remain out of custody. He ordered her to live with her mother, refrain from using marijuana or other drugs or owning a firearm.
Meanwhile, Taylor also faces pending charges in Newport News Circuit Court, where she’s charged with felony child neglect count and a misdemeanor count of “allowing access to firearms by children.”
Taylor declined to comment after Monday’s hearing.
But her grandfather, Calvin Taylor — who shook his head no as his granddaughter was pleading guilty — said he was concerned the sentencing judge wasn’t locked into the two-year cap. “I don’t like it,” he said of the plea deal. “Because it gives the sentencing judge the option to say, “Hell no.'”
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, said in a statement that federal firearms laws are “critical to ensuring public safety” and “are not optional.”
Craig Kailmai, the ATF’s Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Division, which includes Hampton Roads, said federal law would continue to be enforced. “Anyone that is an unlawful user of or addicted to controlled substances such as marijuana are prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition under federal law,” he said in a statement.
Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com