Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. The victims were 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, Lanza fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza killed himself with a gunshot to the head.
The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut history and the deadliest at an elementary school in U.S. history. The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals to make the background check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines which can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.
A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office stated that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but provided no indication of why he did so, or why he targeted the school. A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger's syndrome and, as a teenager, suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but concluded that these factors "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts". The report went on to say, "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence access to deadly weapons proved a recipe for mass murder."
Background
As of November 30, 2012, 456 children were enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The school's security protocols had recently been upgraded, requiring visitors to be individually admitted after visual and identification review by video monitor. Doors to the school were locked at 9:30a.m. each day, after morning arrivals.Newtown is in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about from New Haven, from Hartford, and from 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 before the school shooting.
Under the Connecticut gun laws at the time, the 20-year-old Lanza was old enough to carry a long gun, such as a rifle or shotgun, but too young to own or carry handguns. The guns he used had been purchased legally by his mother.
Events
Murder of Nancy Lanza
Sometime before 9:30a.m. EST on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy Lanza, aged 52, with a.22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle at their Newtown home. Investigators later found her body in her bed, clad in pajamas, with four gunshot wounds to her head. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in his mother's car.Mass shooting begins
Shortly after 9:35a.m., armed with his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and ten magazines with 30 rounds each, Lanza shot his way through a glass panel next to the school's locked front entrance doors. He was wearing black clothing, yellow earplugs, sunglasses, a black hat, and an olive green utility vest. Initial reports that he was wearing body armor were incorrect. Some of those present heard the 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, but did not recognize the gunshots. Hochsprung, Sherlach, and lead teacher Natalie Hammond went into the hall to determine the source of the sounds and encountered Lanza. A faculty member who was at the meeting said that the three women called out "Shooter, stay put!", which alerted their colleagues of the danger and saved their lives. Diane Day, a school therapist who had been at the faculty meeting with Hochsprung, said that both Hochsprung and Sherlach immediately jumped up from their chairs and ran into the hallway to confront Lanza. Shari Thornberg, an aide, heard gunshots. A teacher hiding in the math lab heard school janitor Rick Thorne yell, "Put the gun down!" Lanza killed both Hochsprung and Sherlach. Hammond was hit first in the leg, and then sustained another gunshot wound. She laid still in the hallway and then, not hearing any more noise, crawled back to the conference room and pressed her body against the door to keep it closed. She was later treated at Danbury Hospital.
A nine-year-old boy said he heard the shooter say "Put your hands up!" and someone else say "Don't shoot!" He also heard many people yelling and many gunshots over the intercom while he, his classmates, and his teacher took refuge in a closet in the gymnasium. One teacher was closing a door further down the hallway, when she was hit in the foot with a bullet that ricocheted. Lanza never entered her classroom.
After killing Hochsprung and Sherlach, Lanza entered the main office but apparently did not see the people hiding there, and returned to the hallway. School nurse Sarah Cox, 60, hid under a desk in her office. She later described seeing the door open, and Lanza's boots and legs facing her desk from approximately 20 feet away. He remained standing for a few seconds before turning around and leaving. She and the school secretary Barbara Halstead called 911 and hid in a first-aid supply closet for nearly four hours. Janitor Rick Thorne ran through hallways, alerting classrooms.
Classroom shootings
Lanza entered Room 8, a first-grade classroom where Lauren Rousseau, a substitute teacher, had herded her first-grade students to the back of the room, and was trying to hide them in a bathroom, when Lanza forced his way into the classroom. Rousseau, Rachel D'Avino, and 15 students in Rousseau's class were killed. Fourteen of the children were dead at the scene; one injured child was taken to a hospital for treatment, but was later pronounced dead. Most of the teachers and students were found crowded together in the bathroom. A six-year-old girl, the sole survivor, was found by police in the classroom following the shooting. She hid in a corner of the classroom's bathroom during the shooting. Her family's pastor said she survived by playing dead. When she reached her mother, she said, "Mommy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead." A girl who was hiding in a bathroom along with two teachers told police that she heard a boy in the classroom screaming, "Help me! I don't want to be here!", to which Lanza responded, "Well, you're here," followed by "hammering" sounds.Lanza also went to Room 10, another first-grade classroom nearby. At this point, there are conflicting reports about the order of events. According to some reports, the classroom's teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto, had concealed some of the students in a closet or bathroom, and some of the other students were hiding under desks. Soto was walking back to the classroom door to lock it when Lanza entered the classroom. Lanza walked to the back of the classroom, saw the children under the desks, and shot them. First-grader Jesse Lewis shouted at his classmates to run for safety, and several of them did. Lewis was looking at Lanza when Lanza fatally shot him. Another account, given by a surviving child's father, said that Soto had moved the children to the back of the classroom, and that they were seated on the floor when Lanza entered. According to this account, neither Lanza nor any of the occupants of the classroom spoke. Lanza stared at the people on the floor, pointed the gun at a boy seated there, but did not fire. The boy ran out of the classroom. The final report into the shooting concluded that the sequence of events in Rooms 8 and 10 was "indeterminate".
A Hartford Courant report said that six of the children who escaped did so when Lanza stopped shooting, either because his weapon jammed or he erred in reloading it. Earlier reports said that, as Lanza entered her classroom, Soto told him that the children were in the auditorium. When several of the children came out of their hiding places and tried to run for safety, Lanza fatally shot them. Soto put herself between her students and the shooter, who then fatally shot her. Anne Marie Murphy, the special education teacher who worked with special-needs students in Soto's classroom, was also shot and killed; she was found covering six-year-old Dylan Hockley, who also died. Soto and four children were found dead in the classroom. Soto was near the north wall of the room with a set of keys nearby. One child was taken to the hospital, but was pronounced dead. Six surviving children from the class and a school bus driver took refuge at a nearby home. According to the official report released by the state's attorney, nine children ran from Soto's classroom, and police found two hiding in a class bathroom. Five of Soto's students were killed.
Survivors' eyewitness accounts
First-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29 years old, hid 15 students in a bathroom and barricaded the door, telling them to be completely quiet to remain safe. It is believed that Lanza bypassed her classroom, which was the first classroom on the left side of the hallway. Following a lockdown drill weeks earlier, Roig had failed to remove a piece of black construction paper covering the small window in her classroom door. Lanza may have assumed that Roig's classroom was empty because the door was closed and the window was covered.School library staff Yvonne Cech and Maryann Jacob tried to hide 18 children in a part of the library the school used for lockdown in practice drills. When they discovered that one door would not lock, they had the children crawl into a storage room, where Cech barricaded the door with a filing cabinet.
Two third-grade students, 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 tried to call 911, but could not connect due to lack of reception on her cell phone. She hid with the children for approximately 40 minutes, at which point law enforcement came to lead them out of the room.
When police interviewed survivors, a teacher recalled hearing Lanza curse several times, as well as telling them to, "Look at me!", "Come over here!", and "Look at them!"