Five years on, America still haunted by Sandy Hook

Of all the mass shootings to have scarred the American consciousness in recent years, the one at Sandy Hook stands out for its child victims: 20 young lives cut short inside their elementary school classroom.

Five years later, the wounds are still gaping.

At 9:30 am on Thursday, the bells of the St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, Connecticut rang out 26 times, one chime for each life lost, as the small community came together in remembrance.

At the same hour, on December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old named Adam Lanza burst into the brick school building in Newtown armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and two pistols. Earlier that morning, he had shot and killed his own mother at home.

He fired more than 150 times in the corridors and classrooms, killing 20 children between the ages of six and seven, and six women who worked at the school, before committing suicide.

"FIVE. YEARS. The hurt is the same. The suffering. The missing. The heartbreak. The sadness," tweeted Erica Lafferty, whose mother the school principal Dawn Hochsprung was killed trying to stop the shooter. "Nothing will ever fill this void."

In an America already traumatized by previous school shootings, at Columbine High School in Colorado or Virginia Tech university in Virginia, Sandy Hook was a shock: it was the first to target children so young.

"People ask me: how is Sandy Hook doing today? said Chris Murphy, a senator from the small New England state.

"Sandy Hook will never recover, Sandy Hook will never be the same."

- Obama's tears -

Barack Obama, then nearing the end of his first term in office, shed tears as he addressed the shooting from the White House a few hours later.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," said Obama, who would later describe the massacre as the worst day of his presidency.

But for those hoping that Sandy Hook would push lawmakers to enact tougher restrictions on guns, the years after the shooting brought disappointment.

Post-Sandy Hook gun control legislation was defeated in Congress in April 2013, and virtually nothing has changed since then, beyond local measures taken by cities and states.

"America needs common-sense gun laws more than ever and we must not stop pushing until we get them," tweeted the former president Bill Clinton on Thursday, as he paid tribute to the victims five years on.

What Sandy Hook did bring, however, was a new awareness by schools across the United States of their vulnerability.

Since 2012, alert procedures and drills have multiplied. Doors and windows are reinforced, and schools have closer ties with police.

American schoolchildren are now taught how to respond to an "active shooter" situation, and staff are trained on how to barricade their classrooms.

- Better school security -

Recent events have illustrated the importance of these steps: when a man killed five people in rampage in northern California in November, he attempted to gain access to an elementary school but was unsuccessful.

It only took about 50 seconds for the school to go on lockdown, helping to avert a potential bloodbath.

Sandy Hook also gave rise to new organizations that take aim at gun violence in the US, which kills 90 people per day.

One such group, Sandy Hook Promise, works to prevent shootings by identifying warning signs, such as young people in a situation of social isolation or showing a fascination with morbid ideas.

In a sinister twist, the shooting has also sparked flourishing conspiracy theories -- purveyed by some opponents of gun control -- who claim the massacre was staged.

A professor at a Florida university, fired from his job after insisting Sandy Hook was a hoax, lost a lawsuit this week claiming that his right to free speech was infringed.

But Lafferty, the principal's daughter, says she has suffered five years of online attacks by conspiracy theorist trolls, and the abuse continued the day of the shooting anniversary.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Sandy Hook victims to share $1.5 mn from shooter's mother's estate

NEW YORK, United States - Families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre three years ago have been awarded $1.5 million in damages from the estate of the shooter's mother, their lawyers' office said Wednesday.

Twenty children and six educators were killed when Adam Lanza went on a deadly rampage at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.

US media reported that eight separate lawsuits, involving 16 plaintiffs, were filed seeking compensation from the estate of Nancy Lanza, who was fatally shot by her son Adam moments before the massacre.

Lanza went on to commit suicide.

"There was a settlement for the amount of 1.5 million" dollars, Ana Rios, assistant to lawyer Joshua Koskoff who is representing nine of the families involved, told AFP.

The lawsuits accused Lanza of negligence for leaving a rifle unguarded in her home, within the reach of her son who had a history of mental illness, media reported.

Authorities in Newtown last March demolished the Lanzas' house in a residential part of town, after neighbors complained that it was triggering painful memories of the massacre.

Sandy Hook elementary was knocked down in 2013, making way for a new school that is set to be inaugurated next year.

President Barack Obama vowed on the anniversary of the massacre not to give up on vexed efforts to tighten US gun laws, assailing the Republican-controlled Congress for failing to pass reforms tightening background checks on gun buyers.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

US releases chilling Newtown massacre documents

NEW YORK - Newtown gunman Adam Lanza wore yellow ear plugs that muffled the screams of his victims and he shot himself in the mouth after committing one of America's worst school massacres.

Disturbing details about last year's mass shooting were revealed Friday when US police released thousands of pages of documents, photographs and recordings from their investigation.

The troubled 20-year-old shot dead 20 first grade children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, using a rifle taken from his suburban mother's legally acquired home defense arsenal.

Lanza was dressed almost entirely in black, his clothes -- a shirt, T-shirt, cargo pants, boxer shorts, socks, sneakers, belt and fingerless gloves -- found spattered with blood and gunpowder after the murders.

"Two law enforcement officers arrived during the shooting, at which time the suspect ducked into a classroom and shot himself," according to an FBI incident report contained in the file.

Lanza shot himself in the mouth, shattering his brain and skull, according to the attached forensics report.

The documents are the latest pieces of chilling evidence that expose some of the horror that Lanza's victims endured on December 14, 2012 in the small Connecticut town.

The massacre, just one in what was then a series of deadly shooting sprees across the country, inspired a short-lived and ultimately failed drive to tighten US gun ownership rules.

According to at least one witness interviewed by the FBI, Lanza and his mother Nancy owned at least four firearms, which were kept in a gun safe in the school shooter's bedroom closet.

Witness testimony, which has been redacted to remove names and other identifying details, also revealed little known details about Lanza, who suffered from Asperger's Syndrone.

The gunman was a vegan, interested in Japanese techno music and had been taking Chinese lessons. He also knew how to build a computer from scratch by assembling the spare parts.

His mother at one point took him out of school because he was sensitive to sound and light and photographs showed various windows taped over with white plastic and black bin liners.

One door in the house was also shown taped shut.

Lanza carried out the murders the morning after his mother Nancy returned from a few days away, which she told one friend had been an "experiment" to allow him to stay home alone.

She told friends she was thinking about moving to the western state of Washington or to North Carolina to enrol her troubled son at a special school or get him a job to make him more self-sufficient.

The investigation was unable to find a motive other than to conclude that the killer was obsessed with mass murders and had "significant mental health issues".

Nancy Lanza and her son were said to have had a close relationship. She was not afraid of her son, but allegedly afraid for him.

Earlier this month, US authorities released recordings of emergency calls made by trapped and terrified people from within the school as the killer stalked the classrooms.

On the morning of December 14, Lanza shot dead his mother in the head as she lay in bed, then drove to the school. In collected evidence, a gun was seen lying on the carpeted floor of her bedroom.

Upon arriving at Sandy Hook Elementary, Lanza shot his way through the glass doors, photographs of the shattered scene showed.

He killed the school principal and a psychologist in the hallway, then gunned down two adults each in two first-grade classrooms, and shot 15 children dead in one classroom and five dead in the other.

Lanza took less than 11 minutes to carry out his crime.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Connecticut school shooting claims nearly 30 lives, source says

Newtown, Connecticut (CNN) -- In one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, a gunman opened fire Friday in a Connecticut elementary school, killing nearly 30 people -- most of them children, a law enforcement official receiving information from the scene told CNN.

At least 10 of the dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School were students, a different law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said. Among the dead were the school's principal and psychologist, according to a parent who was at the school when the incident happened.

The mother of the suspected gunman was also among the dead at the school, a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told CNN, while the suspect's brother was found dead in a residential location in Hoboken, New Jersey.

"Why? Why?" one woman wailed as she walked up a wooded roadway leading from the school.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, state police Lt. Paul Vance declined to put a number on the deaths. He would say only that there had been "several fatalities." Police were waiting to notify families before releasing details, but he reassured nervous residents that the school was secure, the danger past.

The gunman is dead, his body in a classroom, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. Police have recovered two weapons from the suspect, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, the source said. It's unclear if police killed the suspect.

Police were questioning another man but are not calling him a suspect, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

President Barack Obama addressed the shooting in an emotional statement Friday afternoon, saying, "Our hearts our broken today." Obama, a father to two girls, wiped away tears as he noted the nation has "endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years."

Despite the danger being past, federal officers in tactical gear were on the scene Friday afternoon, coordinating with state and local authorities. At least four ambulances remained at the school.

'I hope my mom is ok': Tweets from the Connecticut school shooting

Hospital officials in neighboring Danbury said they were treating three people wounded in the shooting. Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said the victims were in "very serious" condition.

Police and teachers rushed students from the building as police swarmed the area shortly after the first calls came in, around 9:40 a.m. ET. Officials moved students to a nearby firehouse, where parents frantically sought information about their children.

Third-grader Alexis Wasik said police and teachers barged into her classroom and told students to hide in the corner.

"Everybody was crying," she said. "And I just heard the police officers yelling."

Aerial images from CNN affiliate News 12 New Jersey showed police officers armed with rifles following a dog into woods near the school.

Other officers, some in tactical gear, stood around the school with guns drawn, CNN affiliate WFSB reported.

'It doesn't seem possible' -- parents shocked by school shooting

All schools in the city were on lockdown Friday as police assessed the situation, Vance said.

Gov. Dan Malloy is "horrified" by what happened, a spokesman said. Malloy was meeting with families Friday afternoon, the spokesman said.

Obama ordered flags to half-staff nationwide in tribute to the victims.

If the number of fatalities holds up, the Newtown shooting would be the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind only the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead.

The 1999 Columbine High shooting in Littleton, Colorado, is the deadliest at a U.S. elementary, junior or high school. In that incident, two students shot 13 people to death before killing themselves.

source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/14/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1