On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother, Nancy, at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, and a proposal for new legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic weapons and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition.
As of November 30, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School had 456 children enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade. According to school authorities, the school’s security protocol had recently been upgraded, requiring visitors to be individually admitted after visual and identification review by video monitor. The doors to the school were locked at 9:30 am each day, after morning arrivals.
Newtown is located in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about 60 miles (97 km) outside New York City. Violent crime had been rare in the town of 28,000 residents; there was only one homicide in the town in the ten years prior to the school shooting.
Shootings
Some time before 9:30 a.m. EST on Friday, December 14, 2012, Lanza fatally shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, age 52, at their Newtown home. Investigators later found her body, clad in pajamas, in her bed with four gunshot wounds to her head. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School.
At about 9:35 am, using his mother’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, Lanza shot his way through a locked glass door at the front of the school. He was wearing black clothing, earplugs and an olive green utility vest carrying magazines for the Bushmaster. Initial reports that he had been wearing body armor were incorrect. Some of those present heard initial shots on the school intercom system, which was being used for morning announcements.
Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were meeting with other faculty members when they heard gunshots. Hochsprung and Sherlach immediately left the room, rushed to the source of the sounds, and encountered and confronted Lanza. He shot and killed both women.
Hochsprung may have turned on the school intercom to alert others in the building. A nine-year-old boy said he heard the shooter say: “Put your hands up!” and someone else say “Don’t shoot!”, people yelling and many gunshots over the intercom as he, his classmates, and teacher took refuge in a closet in the gymnasium. Diane Day, a school therapist who was at the faculty meeting, heard screaming, followed by more gunshots. Natalie Hammond, lead teacher in the meeting room, pressed her body against the door to keep it closed. Lanza shot Hammond through the door, in her leg and arm. She was later treated at Danbury Hospital. The police reported that a second adult was wounded in the attack, but that individual was not publicly identified.
In a first-grade classroom, Lauren Rousseau, a substitute teacher, was shot and killed. Most of the students in her class were killed; a six-year-old girl was the sole survivor. The girl’s family pastor said that she survived the mass shooting by playing dead and remaining still until the building grew quiet, and she felt it was safe to leave. She ran from the school, and was the first child to escape the building. When she reached her mother, she said, “Mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead.” The child described the shooter as a very angry man.
Lanza then went to another first-grade classroom nearby. The classroom’s teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto, was reported to have attempted to hide several children in a closet and cupboards. As Lanza entered her classroom, Soto reportedly told him that the children were in the auditorium. Several of the children then came out of their hiding place and tried to run for safety and were shot dead. Soto put herself between her students and the shooter, who then fatally shot her. Six surviving children from Soto’s class crawled out of the cupboards after the shooting and fled the school. They and a school bus driver took refuge at a nearby home. As reported by his parents, a six-year-old boy in Soto’s class fled with a group of his classmates and the children escaped through the door when Lanza shot their teacher.
Anne Marie Murphy, a teacher’s aide who worked with special-needs students, shielded six-year-old Dylan Hockley with her body, trying to protect him from the bullets that killed them both. Teacher’s aide Rachel D’Avino, who had been employed at the school working with a special-needs student for a little more than one week, also died trying to protect her students.
School nurse Sally Cox, 60, hid under a desk in her office and described the door opening and seeing Lanza’s boots and legs facing her desk from approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) away. He remained standing for a few seconds before turning around and leaving. She and school secretary Barbara Halstead then hid in a first-aid supply closet for up to four hours, after calling 9-1-1. Custodian Rick Thorne ran through hallways, alerting classrooms.
First grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, age 29, hid 14 students in a bathroom and barricaded the door, telling them to be completely quiet to remain safe. School library staff Yvonne Cech and Maryann Jacob first hid 18 children in a part of the library the school used for lockdown in practice drills, but on discovering that one of the doors would not lock, had the children crawl into a storage room as Cech barricaded the door with a filing cabinet.
Music teacher Maryrose Kristopik, 50, barricaded her fourth-graders in a tiny supply closet during the rampage. Lanza arrived moments later, pounding and yelling “Let me in”, while the students in Kristopik’s class quietly hid inside.
Two third graders, chosen as classroom helpers, were walking down the hallway to the office to deliver the morning attendance sheet as the shooting began. Teacher Abbey Clements pulled both children into her classroom, where they hid.
Laura Feinstein, a reading specialist at the school, gathered two students from outside her classroom and hid with them under desks after they heard gunshots. Feinstein called the school office and attempted to call 9-1-1 but was unable to connect because her cell phone did not have reception. She hid with the children for approximately 40 minutes, before law enforcement came to lead them out of the room.
Lanza stopped shooting between 9:46 am and 9:49 am, after firing 50 to 100 rounds. He reloaded frequently during the shooting, sometimes firing only fifteen rounds from a thirty round magazine. He shot all of his victims multiple times, and at least one victim, six-year-old Noah Pozner, 11 times. Most of the shooting took place in two first-grade classrooms near the entrance of the school, killing fourteen in one room and six in the other. The student victims were eight boys and twelve girls, between six and seven years of age, and the six adults were all women who worked at the school. Bullets were also found in at least three cars parked outside the school. After realizing that he had been spotted by a pair of police officers who had entered the building, Lanza fled from their sight and then killed himself with a gunshot to the head with a handgun.
Newtown police dispatch first requested officers on the scene at 9:35 am Connecticut State Police received the first call at 9:41 am, and with Newtown police, quickly mobilized local police dog and police tactical units, a bomb squad, and a state police helicopter.
Police locked down the school and began evacuating the survivors room-by-room, escorting groups of students and adults away from the school. They swept the school for additional shooters at least four times. No shots were fired by the authorities. According to a transcript of police radio traffic, Lanza committed suicide within fifteen minutes of the first 911 call being received.
At approximately 10:00 am, Danbury Hospital scrambled extra medical personnel in expectation of having to treat numerous victims. Three wounded patients were evacuated to the hospital, where two children were later declared dead. The other was an unidentified adult.
The New York City medical examiner dispatched a portable morgue to assist the authorities. The victims’ bodies were removed from the school and formally identified during the night after the shooting. A state trooper was assigned to each victim’s family to protect their privacy and provide them with information.
The weapons were legally owned by Lanza’s mother, who was a gun enthusiast. Police said that Lanza used the Bushmaster rifle to kill the victims at the school. At a press conference on December 15, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, the Chief Medical Examiner of Connecticut, was asked about the wounds, and replied “All the ones that I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon.” Under Connecticut law, the 20-year-old Lanza was old enough to carry a long gun, but too young to legally own or carry handguns.
Investigators are not believed to have found a suicide note or any messages referring to the planning of the attack. Janet Robinson, superintendent of Newtown schools, said she had not found any connection between Lanza’s mother and the school, in contrast to initial media reports that stated Lanza’s mother had worked there. Lanza removed the hard drive from his computer and damaged it prior to the shooting, creating a challenge for investigators to recover data. Investigators have evaluated Lanza’s body, looking for evidence of drugs or medication through toxicology tests. Additionally, although unusual for an investigation of this type and unlikely to provide conclusive information,DNA testing of Lanza is being utilized.
Police also investigated whether Lanza was the person who had been in an altercation with four staff members at Sandy Hook School the day before the massacre. It was presumed that he killed two of the four staff members involved in the altercation (the principal and the psychologist) and wounded the third (the lead teacher) in the attack; the fourth staff member was not at the school that day. The state police stated that they did not know of any reports about any altercations at the school.
Police sources initially reported Lanza’s sibling, Ryan Lanza, as the perpetrator. This was likely because the perpetrator was carrying his brother’s identification, Ryan told The Jersey Journal. Lanza’s brother voluntarily submitted to questioning by New Jersey police, Connecticut State Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police said he was not considered a suspect, and he was not taken into custody. Ryan Lanza said he had not been in touch with his brother since 2010. Connecticut State Police indicated their concern about misinformation being posted on social media sites and threatened prosecution of anyone involved with such activities.
Adam Peter Lanza was born on April 22, 1992, in Exeter, New Hampshire. He and his mother lived in Sandy Hook, 5 miles (8 km) from the elementary school. He did not have a criminal record. He attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for a brief time. Afterward, he attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in Newtown, and then Newtown High School, where he was an honors student. Lanza subsequently was home-schooled by his mother, and earned a GED. Lanza’s aunt said his mother removed him from the Newtown public school system because she was unhappy with the school district‘s plans for her son. He attended Western Connecticut State University in 2008 and 2009.
Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as “intelligent, but nervous and fidgety”. He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school.
Lanza’s brother told law enforcement that Adam was believed to have a personality disorder and was “somewhat autistic“.An anonymous law enforcement official and friends of Nancy Lanza reported that Adam had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Due to concerns that published descriptions of Lanza’s autism could result in a backlash against others with the condition, autism advocates campaigned to clarify that autism is a brain-related developmental problem and not a mental illness. The predatory aggression demonstrated in the shooting is generally not seen in the autistic population. Adam’s father, a corporate executive, Nancy Lanza was supported by alimonypayments. A relative commented that she did not have to work because the divorce settlement had left her “very well off”. There were conflicting reports on whether she had worked as a volunteer at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
According to Nancy Lanza’s sister-in-law, she was a gun enthusiast and owned at least a dozen firearms. She often took her two sons to a local shooting range.
President Obama Cries at Sandy Hook Elementary Speech – Newtown School Shooting Connecticut
President Barack Obama gave a televised address the day of the shootings, saying, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” Obama expressed “enormous sympathy for families that are affected”. He also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other U.S. federal government facilities worldwide in respect of the victims.
President Obama: ‘Newtown, You Are Not Alone’
On December 16, Obama traveled to Newtown where he met with victims’ families and spoke at an interfaith vigil. President Obama will honor the six slain adults posthumously with the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal on February 15, 2013.
Connecticut GovernorDan Malloy addressed the media the evening of the shootings near a local church holding a vigil for the victims, urging the people of Connecticut to come together and help each other. Malloy said, “Evil visited this community today, and it is too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut, we are all in this together, we will do whatever we can to overcome this event, we will get through it.” Hundreds of mourners, including Malloy, attended vigils in various churches in Newtown. On December 17, Malloy called for a statewide moment of silence and church bells to be tolled 26 times at 9:30 am on Friday, December 21, exactly one week after the school shooting
U.S. Secretary of EducationArne Duncan said “… our thanks go out to every teacher, staff member, and first responder who cared for, comforted, and protected children from harm, often at risk to themselves. We will do everything in our power to assist and support the healing and recovery of Newtown.”
The day after the shootings, Lanza’s father released a statement:
“Our hearts go out to the families and friends who lost loved ones and to all those who were injured. Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are. We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired.”
Leaders from many countries and organizations throughout the world also offered their condolences through the weekend after the shooting.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School makeshift memorial on Berkshire Road in Newtown, CT. 12 days after shooting. (Wed 12/26)
In his speech at the December 16 vigil, Obama called for using “whatever power this office holds”, to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Within 15 hours of the incident, 100,000 Americans signed a petition at the Obama administration’s We the People petitioning website in support of a renewed national debate on gun control. President Obama later affirmed that he would make gun control a “central issue” at the start of his second term of office, in a speech on December 19. The President formed a Gun Violence Task Force to be led by Vice President Joe Biden to address the causes of gun violence in the United States.
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Joe Lieberman called for an assault weapon ban, with Feinstein intending to introduce a ban bill on the first day of the new Congress, while former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot and injured in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, has launched Americans for Responsible Solutions to raise money for further gun control efforts in light of the Sandy Hook shooting.Fear of future restrictions on firearms led to a spike in sales of guns, ammunition, and magazines in the weeks following the shooting.
A month after the shooting, President Obama cited the incident while announcing proposals for increased gun control. His proposals included universal background checks on firearms purchases, an assault weapons ban, and limiting magazine capacity to 10 cartridges. Relatives of the victims in the shooting and survivors from other mass shootings were official guests during the announcement.
The school was closed indefinitely following the shooting, partially because it remained a crime scene. Sandy Hook students returned to school on January 3, 2013 at Chalk Hill Middle School in nearby Monroe at the town’s invitation. Chalk Hill is a previously unused facility, refurbished after the shooting, with desks and equipment brought in from Sandy Hook Elementary. The Chalk Hill school has been temporarily renamed “Sandy Hook”. The University of Connecticut created a scholarship for the surviving children of the shootings.
On January 31, 2013, the Newtown school board voted unanimously to ask for police officer presence in all of its elementary schools; previously other schools in the district had such protection, but Sandy Hook had not been one of those.
NRA’s Wayne LaPierre Response To The Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre
Published on Dec 21, 2012
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made a statement today in reaction to last week’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn. LaPierre called for armed security at America’s schools saying “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Associated Press/WSB-TV – In this image made from video and released by WSB-TV, authorities investigate the scene of a school shooting, Thursday, Jan 31, 2013 in Atlanta. Authorities say a 14-year-old has been wounded in a shooting at an Atlanta middle school and a suspect has been taken into custody. Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos says the wounded student has been taken “alert, conscious and breathing” to Grady Hospital. (AP Photo/WSB-TV)
ATLANTA (AP) — A 14-year-old boy was wounded outside a middle school Thursday afternoon and a fellow student was in custody as a suspect, authorities said. No other students were hurt.
Police swarmed Price Middle School just south of downtown Atlanta after reports of the shooting at 1:50 p.m., while a crowd of anxious parents gathered in the streets, awaiting word on their children. Students were being kept at the locked-down school some two hours after the shooting but television footage showed some of them being dismissed.
The wounded boy was taken “alert, conscious and breathing” to Grady Memorial Hospital, said Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos. Atlanta Public Schools said on their website that the suspect also was a student at Price.
Calls to the school district were not immediately returned.
Atlanta Fire Cpt. Marian McDaniel said the teen was shot in the back of the head and a teacher was treated at the scene for minor cuts.
Shakita Walker, whose daughter is an eighth-grader at the school, said she received a text from her that said “Ma somebody’s shooting and somebody got shot.” Walker, who works at another school, said she jumped in her car and was thinking “just hurry up and get there.”
Walker said her daughter called to tell her that they were being kept in the gymnasium, but she said she was anxious to see her to make sure she was OK.
The fear and anxiety was palpable in the crowd, as one person yelled “Does anyone know what happened?”
Mayor Kasim Reed condemned gun violence in a statement shortly after the shooting and said counselors were already at the school to meet with students, faculty and family members.
Aside from the historic presidential race, the thing I will remember most about 2012 is how it was book-ended by tragedies that shocked the nation.
In February, Trayvon Martin was making his way back to his father’s girlfriend’s apartment in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. He was returning from a 7-Eleven with an iced tea and a bag of Skittles. George Zimmerman, a gun-toting neighborhood watch volunteer, thought Trayvon was “a real suspicious guy” and called the police. By the time police arrived, the unarmed 17-year-old was dead from a single gunshot to his chest.
What happened next would outrage much of the nation. Zimmerman claimed self-defense and was released without being charged thanks to Florida’s crazy “stand your ground” law — a dangerous law pushed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that allows someone to “meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”
Adam Lanza allegedly slaughtered seven adults and 20 children by shooting his way into the school with assault weapon and targeting kids who were just six and seven years old. A stranger targeting children for murder inside their school was something we’ve never before encountered. The emotional punch of such evil was personified by a tearful President Obama.
Lawrence O’Donnell On NRA Presser: Wayne LaPierre Is A ‘Desperate, Cornered Rat’
Published on Dec 21, 2012
Lawrence O’Donnell took on the widely-panned NRA press conference earlier today, completely unsurprised that Wayne LaPierre, the nation’s top gun lobbyist, stubbornly refused to acknowledge that guns were at fault in last Friday’s tragic Connecticut elementary school shooting, and basically ranked video games and violent movies as more dangerous than guns. O’Donnell methodically deconstructed and tore into every single one of LaPierre’s points, calling him a “lobbyist for mass murderers” and a “desperate, cornered rat.”
Bearing witness to the worst year of gun rampages in modern US history.
—By Mother Jones staff | Fri Dec. 21, 2012
The media coverage tends to linger on the killers. But as the nation mourns the excruciating losses in Newtown—and finally begins to confront an epidemic of mass shootings amid the worst year for them in modern US history—it is equally important to bear witness to the victims. What follows are portraits of 151 people physically wounded or killed in the rampages of 2012. In addition to the victims of this year’s seven mass shootings, we’ve included the victims of similar but less lethal rampages in a Portland shopping mall, a Milwaukee spa, and a Cleveland high school.
The total number of lives devastated by these attacks far exceeds 151, of course, starting with survivors who narrowly escaped physical harm, such as the unidentified six-year-old girl who played dead and walked out of Sandy Hook Elementary School against all odds.Mother Jones has only included photos of those injured and killed that were shared publicly by the families or survivors themselves, or for which we were granted specific permission. For essential context and findings from our in-depth investigation, also see our guide to mass shootings in America.
‘SNL’ Opens With ‘Silent Night’ in Honor of Shooting Victims
Published on Dec 15, 2012
“Saturday Night Live” opened with a children’s choir performing “Silent Night” in memory of the 20 children and seven adults killed in the shooting spree in Newtown, Conn.
It was a moving, understated start to a packed “SNL” that featured a slew of guests, as well as Sir Paul McCartney performing again with the surviving members of Nirvana, as he did at Wednesday’s Hurricane Sandy relief concert.
Samuel L. Jackson also dropped what sounded a lot like the F-word, though he denied it on Twitter. He did acknowledge saying “bulls—.”
Rather than try to address Friday’s mass shooting through host Martin Short’s monologue — or, somehow, some sort of hastily assembled sketch — the show had the New York Children’s Choir sing a song that seemed to reach out to the children killed the day before.
RT @LipstickLibShow: Peggy Noonan: "This is bigger than Watergate" -but not bigger than your Iran-Contra Affair, is it Pegs? http://t.co/Jz…Still A MilitantNegro 2 hours ago
Jueseppi B.
