A Virginia mother held liable for her 6-year-old son’s shooting of his elementary school teacher this year was handed a two-year sentence Friday on a state charge of felony child neglect.

Deja Taylor, 26, could have faced as many as five years in prison, but was given a shorter sentence, The Associated Press reported. A plea deal with prosecutors led them to drop a misdemeanor charge of reckless storage of a firearm; they had suggested as little as six months in prison, but the judge did not have to follow that. …

In a sentencing memo on the federal drug charge, prosecutors offered new details in the family’s home life, including that the boy had twice stolen car keys from Taylor’s purse, even crashing it on one occassion. In addition, Taylor apparently fired her gun about a month before the shooting at Richneck in an agurment over whether her son’s father was cheating with another woman, according to text messages obtained by prosecutors.

[Yikes. At first this looked like a rather tough sentence, but under these circumstances, the judge may have erred on the lenient side. A grand jury is still looking at this case to see whether anyone else is criminally responsible for this situation, and the teacher’s lawsuit against the school district is still in progress. — Ed]