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| Brenda Hernadez of Enfield Conn., comforts her daughter, Crystal, at a makeshift shrine Friday evening. |
NEWTOWN, Conn. — As gunshots echoed through an elementary school in Connecticut on Friday, children huddled in the corners and closets where desperate teachers had tried to hide them from the gunman who had invaded their school.
By the time it was over, 28 people, including 20 children the gunman and his own mother were dead, and a nation was left struggling to put some kind of context to its latest school massacre.
Hours after the tragedy, U.S. President Barack Obama struggled to maintain his composure as he tried to offer some comfort to those reeling from the events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., a school whose name now takes its place among institutions forever linked to such violence, including Columbine high school and Virginia Tech.
“Our hearts are broken today,” Obama said, his voice breaking. “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old.”
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the last few years. . . . I react not as the president, but as anyone else would — as a parent.”
The perpetrator this time was 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who authorities say killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, a teacher at the school, before driving to the facility in her car with an arsenal that is now believed to have included at least five guns.
Reports in the wake of the shooting said Lanza suffered from some type of personality disorder.
After the bloodshed, Lanza took his own life. One person was injured.
One of the victims was a former Winnipeg girl, the Winnipeg Free Press reported, identifying her as the six-year-old daughter of former University of Manitoba jazz instructor Jimmy Greene. Her name was Ana.
Pastor Terry Janke of the Whyte Ridge Baptist Church in Winnipeg said a prayer service was held Friday night for the Greene family.
“There are many young families who know the Greene family. They were there with their young children,” he said.
“There’s almost disbelief, a numbness and deep sorrow. We were sharing scripture and comforting one another.”
Diane Licata, the mother of another child at the school, told Postmedia News her six-year-old son witnessed the gunman shoot his first-grade teacher.
“Our son did see him shoot his teacher,” she said Friday night. “He’s traumatized. He’s six years old. We’re just going to rally around him and make him whole again.”
Teachers and administrators had been meeting that morning, preparing for the day and planning the Christmas concert. Suddenly three shots rang out.
The principal and vice-principal and a third staff member rushed into the hall to see what was happening. They were immediately shot. The vice-principal returned with a bleeding foot, and police were alerted.
After the shooting, panicked parents raced to the school, looking for their children. The youngsters, many in their first months of kindergarten and none above the fourth grade, were told by police to close their eyes as they were led from the building. Schoolchildren — some crying, others looking frightened — were escorted through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders.
It is America’s second-deadliest school shooting — exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead in 2007. While paling in numbers, the magnitude of Friday’s rampage was amplified by the tender age of the children murdered, and those who will be haunted by the unfathomable violence they witnessed.
Licata said her son had the wherewithal to run out the classroom and down the street to safety. She said she received a text message from another parent telling her he was safe.
“It’s indescribable what you feel at the moment. You’re completely numb waiting,” she said, declining to say more.
Stories of the events that unfolded within the school revealed teachers’ frantic efforts to protect the young lives in their care.
Teachers locked their doors and ordered children to hide in closets and duck into corners as gunshots echoed through the building.
As the shooting continued, someone switched on the school’s public address system, alerting people in the building to the attack by letting them hear the panic in the school office.
Theodore Varga said he was in a meeting with other fourth-grade teachers when he heard the gunfire, but there was no lock on the door. He said that over the public address system, “you could hear people in the office. You could hear the hysteria that was going on. I think whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring.”
Also, a custodian went running around, warning people there was a gunman in the school, Varga said.”He said, ‘Guys! Get down! Hide!”’ Varga said. “So he was actually a hero.”
The teacher said he did not know if the custodian survived.
Adam Lanza’s older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned Friday evening, but officials said Ryan Lanza was not believed to have played a role in the rampage. Ryan told police he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.
Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist and nurse practitioner in Newtown, said local residents recently gathered for the annual tree-lighting ceremony. She described the area as relatively affluent and tight-knit.
“People are devastated,” she said. “Nobody expects a town will be hit like this. Drives home that no one is immune.
“My 16-year-old daughter was in tears. She knows a lot of the families that were affected.”
Pasacreta said she’s been consoling people over the phone all day and plans to volunteer her time over the weekend to counsel families affected by the tragedy. She’s especially concerned for the children.
“It’s hard enough for (adults) to understand. Basically children have a different way of thinking. . . . A lot of kids that age don’t have a sense of death being a permanent situation. They think people will come back.
“Kids can experience trauma just from hearing the news.”
As darkness fell across the small New England town its citizens sought sanctuary in the security of their homes and churches.
Stores closed. Homes fell silent. And except for the police and firemen, streets were deserted.
“I haven’t shed any tears but I have been crying all day,” said Harrison Gillis, 21, who had attended Sandy Hook elementary school.
Lt. George Sinko, of the Newtown police, has lived in the town for 23 years.
“You are never really prepared for something like this,” he said. “Even the training doesn’t prepare you. I am really proud of the officers who responded. They are the ones I am thinking about now. It was a horrific scene to deal with.”
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy attempted to bring some comfort to the state’s stunned residents.
“Evil visited this community today and it’s too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut — we’re all in this together. We’ll do whatever we can to overcome this event,” Malloy said.
Malloy said Adam Lanza and his mother lived in a well-to-do part of Newtown where neighbours are doctors or hold white-collar positions at companies such as General Electric, Pepsi and IBM. Several guns were found — including a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols, inside the school, and a .223-calibre rifle in the back of a car.
While the shootings instantly bring to mind episodes such as the Columbine High School massacre that killed 15 in 1999, the U.S. has seen a spate of gun violence across the country in recent months.
Earlier this week, three people died when a gunman opened fire inside a mall in suburban Portland, Ore. In August, a shooter took the lives of six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc., before being killed by a police officer. In July, a masked gunman opened fire at a midnight movie in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 and injuring 58.
”You go to a movie theatre in Aurora and all of a sudden your life is taken,” Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis said. “You’re at a shopping mall in Portland, Ore., and your life is taken. This morning, when parents kissed their kids goodbye knowing that they are going to be home to celebrate the holiday season coming up, you don’t expect this to happen. I think as a society, we need to come together. It has to stop, these senseless deaths.”
With files from The Associated Press
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