Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting leaves students, staff dead
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Date: 12/14/2012 12:38:31 PM
Sender: Washington Post
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An official with knowledge of a shooting at a Connecticut elementary school says 27 people are dead, including 18 children. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing.
By David A. Fahrenthold, Updated: Friday, December 14, 2:20 PM
A shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. on Friday morning left a number of students and staff dead, along with the apparent gunman, authorities said.
A Connecticut State Police official, Lt. Paul Vance, did not release an exact number of dead during a press conference about 1:45 p.m. Friday. Vance said that “the shooter is deceased inside the building,” but gave no details about the gunman’s identity.
Officials said more details would be released later, after victims’ families had been informed.
The Associated Press, citing an unnamed source, reported that the death toll was 27, including 18 children. That would make this shooting one of the largest and deadliest in recent U.S. history.
The AP also reported that a law enforcement official in Washington said the attacker was a 20-year-old man with ties to the school, Sandy Hook Elementary, and that one of the guns was a .223-caliber rifle.
The official also said that New Jersey State Police were searching a location in that state in connection with the shootings. That official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.
Police were called about 9:30 a.m. Friday morning to the school, in a town about 60 miles northeast of NewYork City. Both state and local police converged on the school, Vance said, and “began a complete active shooter search of the building.” TV reports also showed an FBI SWAT team on the scene.
Students inside were evacuated to a nearby firehouse, where television reporters saw parents tearfully reuniting with their children.
Students recounted hearing police officers on the roof, and classmates so frightened they became sick to their stomachs.
In interview with New York’s WABC television, student Brendan Murray said he was in the gym when he heard a banging sound. Students at first thought a custodian had knocked something over, but then they heard a scream.
“Then a police came in and was like, ‘Is he in here?’ Then he ran out,” Murray said. “And then somebody yelled, ‘Get to a safe place!’ So we went to the closet in the gym.”
Eventually, he said, police escorted the students out of the school and to a nearby firehouse, where they reunited with their classmates.
“We sat in our classes,” he said. “And were all really happy that we were all alive.”
Parent Stephen Delgiadice told the AP that his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.
“It’s alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America,” he said.
The superintendent’s office said the district had locked down schools in Newtown. Schools in neighboring towns also were locked down as a precaution.
A dispatcher at the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps said a teacher had been shot in the foot and taken to Danbury Hospital. Andrea Rynn, a spokeswoman at the hospital, said it had three patients from the school but she did not have information on the extent or nature of their injuries.
A photo posted by The Newtown Bee newspaper showed a group of young students — some crying, others looking visibly frightened — being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders.
Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his 9-year-old sister at the school. He told the AP his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.
Richard Wilford’s 7-year-old son, Richie, is in the second grade at the school. His son told him that he heard a noise that “sounded like what he described as cans falling.”
The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.
“There’s no words,” Wilford said, according to the AP. “It’s sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him.”
The White House said President Obama was notified of the shooting and his spokesman Jay Carney said the president had “enormous sympathy for families that are affected.”
Also Friday, Carney told reporters that it was not the time to discuss gun control legislation.
“We’re still waiting for more information about the incident in Connecticut,” Carney replied when asked if the massacre raised questions about gun policy. “As we do, I think it’s important, on a day like today, to view this as I know the president, as a father, does, and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and to support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event.”
He concluded, “I’m sure [there] will be rather a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don’t think today is that day.”
Pressed on when that discussion would happen, the spokesman said it would — but not as we were still figuring out how the tragic massacre occurred.
“I think that day will come, but today’s not that day, especially as we are awaiting more information about the situation,” he said. |
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