By Jueseppi B.
60 Minutes Newtown Parents EMOTIONAL Interview Part 1
CBS News‘ 60 Minutes aired a powerful interview with seven of the families Sunday night, all members of the group Sandy Hook Promise. Many of the parents spoke wrenchingly of the moments leading up to the discovery of their children’s fates, and discussed what they would like to see happen on Capitol Hill. While background checks seem to have the most public support, it was magazine sizes that many of the Newtown parents saw as most important.
The parents of Sandy Hook children Dylan Hockley, Ana Marquez-Greene, Benjamin Wheeler, Daniel Barden, and Jesse Lewis, as well as the mother of slain teacher Lauren Rousseau and the husband of school psychologist Mary Sherlach, began by introducing interviewer Scott Pelley to their lost loved ones. Jimmy Greene told Pelley that it was an honor to have known his six year-old, Ana, and that he cries every day. Ben Wheeler’s mom, Francine, revealed that her other son, Nate, “was hiding when he heard Ben and his classmates and educators get shot.”
Mark Barden said, of his late son, Daniel, “He was known as the kid that would talk to somebody sitting alone. He was genuinely an old soul.”
Nicole Hockley fought tears as she held a photo of her son, Dylan, and told Pelley “He was always smiling, and always laughing. And he was very pure, possibly because of his age — he was six — and possibly because he was autistic.”
Neil Heslin said his son, Jesse Lewis, “was my best friend and my buddy. He’d introduce himself as Jesse and daddy. He was my whole life.”
Bill Sherlach said that his late wife, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, felt that Sandy Hook “was the place that she was meant to be, doing what she would call ‘God’s work.’”
Terri Rousseau, teacher Lauren Rousseau’s mom, said that Lauren “had a sort of innocence about her, a kind of denial of all the ugly things in the world. We had no idea that some ugly thing would come and take her from us.”
The group then spoke about their experience lobbying the Connecticut legislature, with, perhaps, some messages for the lawmakers they’ll see today. Asked why they’d handed legislators photos of the children, Nicole Hockley responded, “They need to not just look us in the eyes, but look at our children, and the lost ones and… and see those faces, see what’s gone, and remember this isn’t just about political parties, this isn’t just about careers; this is about people, and this is about making change to save people. And it’s important to remember the people you are doing this for.”
Later in the interview, Mark Barden told Pelley that his message to Congress is that “They have to be our government and vote up or down. They have to vote.”
Asked what changes they thought were most important, Mark Barden said “The universal background check is very important,” while Bill Sherlach pointed to magazine sizes. “You can have a million bullets,” he said, “but if you have to put them in one at a time, the ability to do any kind of real damage is significantly reduced.”
Sherlach countered the argument that reloading only takes a few seconds by revealing that, at one point during the shooting, 11 children were able to escape when the shooter was reloading. “It’s just a simple arithmetic,” he added. “If you have to change magazines 15 times instead of five times, you have three times as many incidents as where something could jam, something could be bobbled. You just increase the time for intervention. You increase the time frame where kids can get out. And there’s 11 kids out there today that… that are still running around on the playground pretty much now at lunchtime.”
Mark Barden added that such arguments ignore chilling realities. “When you’re in that situation, if you want to picture yourself murdering children in a classroom, the police are coming in to… to kill you, and then you’re about to commit suicide, your brain is in another place. You’re not neatly and effectively changing that magazine.”
Nicole Hockley noted that search warrants indicate that the shooter left the standard size magazines at home, in favor of the 30-round ones he used in the killings. “That was a choice the shooter made,” she said. “He knew that the larger capacity magazine clips were more lethal.
David Wheeler said that “There is a place for 30-round magazines– in the military, on the battlefield, at a range. if they stay at the range, they stay at the range.”
60 Minutes Newtown Parents Emotional Interview Part 2
In the second part of the interview, some of the parents recounted, to Pelley, the slow-motion heartbreak of finding out what had happened to their kids on December 14. Nicole Hockley, Jimmy Greene, and Nelba Marquez-Greene each had a child who survived the shooting, and one who didn’t. “Someone said to me, you know, ‘I’ve seen Jake. He’s in… he’s in one of the other rooms,’” Nicole Hockley remembered, “and that was a relief, you know, a moment of, ‘he’s okay, and that’s okay that he’s okay,’ and… and a woman asked me, ‘What… what classroom was your other child in?’ and I said, ‘Ms. soto.’ and she said, ‘I heard she got shot.’ and I got… I got really angry at her, and I remember very clearly saying, ‘Don’t you dare say that to me if you don’t know it’s true.’”
Jimmy Greene remembered being reunited with his son, Isaiah. “I just went and grabbed him and held him,” Greene said, “and he was just crying, ‘daddy,’ you know, ‘there were so many gunshots and,’ you know, ‘I saw this and I saw that.’ So, I just took my son in my arms. He’s a big kid; I took him like he was two years old again and held him on my shoulder and was just running from room to room, trying to locate Ana’s class.”
But neither parent would be reunited with their other child. Governor Dannel Malloy eventually appeared to tell the remaining family members that “if we were in that room, that our child or adult wasn’t coming back to us.”
There was some more discussion of the changes they’d like to see from Congress, but the real power of this interview was in the way these families remember their lost loved ones, as they described, for Pelley, the ways in which they keep them alive, and keep themselves alive. Mark Barden summed it up, wistfully and poetically, by telling Pelley “So, here we are. We’re left with pictures and dreams and memories, and any little shred of evidence of their physical time with us. And we just have to ask people to remember that. To please think about that always, because now is the time to turn this tragedy into the place where we evolve as a society, and look to any possible way you can do that.”
Dylan Hockley’s parents: ‘We’ll stay in Newtown’
Published on Jan 16, 2013
The parents of a British-born boy killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting have said they plan to stay in Newtown despite the death of their son.
Six-year-old Dylan Hockley was one of 20 children who lost their lives when Adam Lanza opened fire at the Connecticut primary school in December.
Dylan’s mother Nicole wept as she described the moment she heard her boy was among the victims.
Her husband Ian Hockley, formerly of Eastleigh, Hampshire, told the BBC’s Steve Kingstone: “The unthinkable has happened…how could it possibly get worse.”
Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: Remembering the Victims That Died in Newtown, Connecticut
Published on Dec 16, 2012
Amy Robach describes the impact of the tragedy on the local community.
President Obama emotional comment on Newtown Connecticut elementary school massacre
Published on Dec 14, 2012
Being a father of 2 daughters himself, Mr. President got very emotional, choke up and have tear in his eyes, he has to pause, wipe his eye to continue his speech.
Rachel Maddow. SANDY HOOK EPIC RANT!!! Gun Control. TEARS Into Ted Cruz.
Published on Mar 15, 2013
maddow ted cruz sandy hook epic rant. An incensed Rachel Maddow tore into Republican senator Ted Cruz and called for further gun control on her Thursday show.
Maddow started the show by telling anyone with a connection to the massacre in Newtown that they might not want to watch the segment. She then shared new details of the shooting that were uncovered by the Hartford Courant. The one that seemed most chilling to her was that Adam Lanza took just five minutes to shoot 152 bullets and kill 26 people.
“Had he only had access to ten-round magazines instead of 30-round magazines he would have had to reload 14 times,” she said. “He would have needed 14 spare magazines beyond the one in the gun with the extra round in the chamber. Reloading 14 times. You think he would have still pulled off the whole thing in less than five minutes?
She then turned to Cruz, who had an extremely bitter exchange with Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein about guns. Feinstein –who came to political prominence after the assassination of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk and George Moscone — grew so angry at Cruz that she accused him of treating her like a sixth-grader.
“Let the record show that you can be a United States Senator for 21 years, you can be 79-years-old, you can be the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and one of the most recognizable and widely respected veteran public servants in your nation, but if you are female while all of other those things, men who you defeat in arguments will still respond to you by calling you hysterical and telling you to calm down,” Maddow said.”
Newtown mother to Conn. legislature: “Don’t give up”
Published on Jan 30, 2013
Nicole Hockley, whose six-year-old son Dylan was killed in the Newtown attack, speaks before the Connecticut state legislature about changing laws to address violence.
Connecticut school massacre parents’ emotional appeal to end gun violence
Published on Jan 14, 2013
The grieving parents of children killed in the Connecticut school massacre call for action top prevent similar tragedies, saying “this can happen in any community”.
Nicole Hockley’s son Dylan was among the 20 schoolchildren and six adults killed by a gunman a month ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Originally from Rhode Island, Ms Hockley had lived in the UK with her husband for nearly 18 years before deciding to move back to Connecticut in search of a better life for her son.
“It’s been one month since I lost my son, Dylan and 25 other families lost their loved ones. At times it feels like only yesterday and other times it feels as if many years have past,” she said.
The Sandy Hook group says it wants to hold open-minded discussions about a range of issues, including guns, mental health and safety in schools and other public places.
“The Sandy Hook promises the start of our change. It’s a promise we make for our community, but we need a nation of communities to join us in making and delivering on these promises if we are going to achieve true transformation. I don’t know yet what these changes are. I come with no preconceived agenda,” Ms Hockley said.
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Jueseppi B.
