(CNN) — The first-grade teacher shot by her 6-year-old student at a Virginia elementary school took the stand to testify Thursday in her civil trial against a former assistant principal, who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that the boy may have brought a gun to school before the shooting.

“I thought I was dying. I thought I had died,” Abby Zwerner said Thursday, shortly before her attorneys rested their case, recounting the moment she was shot in the hand and chest on January 6, 2023, while sitting at a reading table in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Zwerner raised her hand instinctively as she realized what the student was going to do, she said.

“The look on the student’s face is the large memory that I have,” Zwerner said Thursday. “It was like a

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