Conn. town mourns as police look for answers
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NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) - Investigators tried to figure out what led a bright but painfully awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, while townspeople sadly took down some of their Christmas decorations and struggled Saturday with how to go on.
The tragedy brought forth soul-searching and grief around the globe. Families as far away as Puerto Rico began to plan funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.
Relatives of the shooter, whose victims included his mother, were at a loss for words.
"The whole family is traumatized by this event," said a police official who knows the family. A family statement read: "We reach out to the community of Newtown and express our heartfelt sorrow for this incomprehensible and profound loss of innocence."
Amid the sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal and the school psychologist who lost their lives rushing toward the gunman, Adam Lanza, in an attempt to stop him.
Police shed no light on what triggered the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.
However, another law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have found no note or manifesto from Lanza of the sort they have come to expect after murderous rampages such as the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 that left 33 people dead.
The mystery deepened as Newtown education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there on Friday.
Lanza shot to death his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way inside and opened fire in two classrooms, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.
James Champion, Nancy Lanza's brother and a retired police captain in Kingston, N.H., said through the police chief that he had not seen his nephew in eight years. Champion, who still works as a part-time officer, said he would not discuss what might have triggered the rampage since the case is under investigation.
On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all of them were apparently shot more than once. All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.
Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, "I'm lucky if I can tell you how many I found."
The tragedy plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome colonial homes, red-brick sidewalks and 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings in recent years have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.
Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."
"People in my neighborhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations," said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.
The list of the dead was released Saturday, but in the tightly knit town, nearly everyone already seemed to know someone who died.
Among the dead: well-liked Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, who town officials say tried to stop the rampage and paid with her life; school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, who probably would have helped survivors grapple with the tragedy; a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year; and a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada.
"Next week is going to be horrible," said the town's legislative council chairman, Jeff Capeci, thinking about the string of funerals the town will face. "Horrible, and the week leading into Christmas."
School board chairwoman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with parents who lost children and shivered as she recalled those conversations. "They were asking why. They can't wrap their minds around it. Why? What's going on?" she said. "And we just don't have any answers for them."
Nancy Lanza, who was once a stockbroker for John Hancock in Boston and once lived in Kingston, N.H., was a kind, considerate and loving person, Kingston Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said.
"She was very involved in the community and very well-respected," Briggs said.
Authorities said Adam Lanza had no criminal history, and it was not clear whether he had a job. Lanza was believed to have suffered from a personality disorder, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's, a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness. People with the disorder are often highly intelligent. While they can become frustrated more easily, there is no evidence of a link between Asperger's and violent behavior, experts say.
The law enforcement officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.
Acquaintances describe the former honor student as smart but odd and remote.
Olivia DeVivo, now a student at the University of Connecticut, recalled that Lanza always came to school toting a briefcase and wearing his shirt buttoned all the way up. "He was very different and very shy and didn't make an effort to interact with anybody" in his 10th-grade English class, she said.
"You had yourself a very scared young boy who was very nervous around people," said Richard Novia, who was the school district's head of security and adviser to the high school's Tech Club, of which Lanza was a member. He added: "He was a loner."
Novia said Lanza had extreme difficulties relating to fellow students and teachers, as well as a strange bodily condition: "If that boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically."
Lanza would also go through crises that would require his mother to come to school to deal with. Such episodes might involve "total withdrawal from whatever he was supposed to be doing, be it a class, be it sitting and read a book," Novia said.
When people approached Lanza in the hallways, he would press himself against the wall or walk in a different direction, clutching his black case "like an 8-year-old who refuses to give up his teddy bear," said Novia, who now lives in Tennessee.
Even so, Novia said his main concern about Lanza was that he might become a target for teasing or abuse by other students, not that he might become a threat.
"Somewhere along in the last four years there were significant changes that led to what has happened Friday morning," Novia said. "I could never have foreseen him doing that."
Lanza's family was struggling to make sense of what happened and "trying to find whatever answers we can," his father, Peter Lanza, said in a statement late Saturday that also expressed sympathy for the victims' families.
Sandy Hook Elementary will be closed next week - some parents can't even conceive of sending their children back, Leidlein said - and officials are deciding what to do about the town's other schools.
Asked whether the town would recover, Maryann Jacob, a clerk in the school library who took cover in a storage room with 18 fourth-graders during the shooting rampage, said: "We have to. We have a lot of children left."
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jim Fitzgerald, Bridget Murphy, Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Newtown; Adam Geller in Southbury, Conn.; and Stephen Singer in Hartford, Conn.
The tragedy brought forth soul-searching and grief around the globe. Families as far away as Puerto Rico began to plan funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.
Relatives of the shooter, whose victims included his mother, were at a loss for words.
"The whole family is traumatized by this event," said a police official who knows the family. A family statement read: "We reach out to the community of Newtown and express our heartfelt sorrow for this incomprehensible and profound loss of innocence."
Amid the sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal and the school psychologist who lost their lives rushing toward the gunman, Adam Lanza, in an attempt to stop him.
Police shed no light on what triggered the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.
However, another law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have found no note or manifesto from Lanza of the sort they have come to expect after murderous rampages such as the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 that left 33 people dead.
The mystery deepened as Newtown education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there on Friday.
Lanza shot to death his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way inside and opened fire in two classrooms, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.
James Champion, Nancy Lanza's brother and a retired police captain in Kingston, N.H., said through the police chief that he had not seen his nephew in eight years. Champion, who still works as a part-time officer, said he would not discuss what might have triggered the rampage since the case is under investigation.
On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all of them were apparently shot more than once. All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.
Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, "I'm lucky if I can tell you how many I found."
The tragedy plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome colonial homes, red-brick sidewalks and 27,000 people to the grim map of towns where mass shootings in recent years have periodically reignited the national debate over gun control but led to little change.
Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."
"People in my neighborhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations," said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.
The list of the dead was released Saturday, but in the tightly knit town, nearly everyone already seemed to know someone who died.
Among the dead: well-liked Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, who town officials say tried to stop the rampage and paid with her life; school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, who probably would have helped survivors grapple with the tragedy; a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year; and a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada.
"Next week is going to be horrible," said the town's legislative council chairman, Jeff Capeci, thinking about the string of funerals the town will face. "Horrible, and the week leading into Christmas."
School board chairwoman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with parents who lost children and shivered as she recalled those conversations. "They were asking why. They can't wrap their minds around it. Why? What's going on?" she said. "And we just don't have any answers for them."
Nancy Lanza, who was once a stockbroker for John Hancock in Boston and once lived in Kingston, N.H., was a kind, considerate and loving person, Kingston Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said.
"She was very involved in the community and very well-respected," Briggs said.
Authorities said Adam Lanza had no criminal history, and it was not clear whether he had a job. Lanza was believed to have suffered from a personality disorder, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's, a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness. People with the disorder are often highly intelligent. While they can become frustrated more easily, there is no evidence of a link between Asperger's and violent behavior, experts say.
The law enforcement officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.
Acquaintances describe the former honor student as smart but odd and remote.
Olivia DeVivo, now a student at the University of Connecticut, recalled that Lanza always came to school toting a briefcase and wearing his shirt buttoned all the way up. "He was very different and very shy and didn't make an effort to interact with anybody" in his 10th-grade English class, she said.
"You had yourself a very scared young boy who was very nervous around people," said Richard Novia, who was the school district's head of security and adviser to the high school's Tech Club, of which Lanza was a member. He added: "He was a loner."
Novia said Lanza had extreme difficulties relating to fellow students and teachers, as well as a strange bodily condition: "If that boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically."
Lanza would also go through crises that would require his mother to come to school to deal with. Such episodes might involve "total withdrawal from whatever he was supposed to be doing, be it a class, be it sitting and read a book," Novia said.
When people approached Lanza in the hallways, he would press himself against the wall or walk in a different direction, clutching his black case "like an 8-year-old who refuses to give up his teddy bear," said Novia, who now lives in Tennessee.
Even so, Novia said his main concern about Lanza was that he might become a target for teasing or abuse by other students, not that he might become a threat.
"Somewhere along in the last four years there were significant changes that led to what has happened Friday morning," Novia said. "I could never have foreseen him doing that."
Lanza's family was struggling to make sense of what happened and "trying to find whatever answers we can," his father, Peter Lanza, said in a statement late Saturday that also expressed sympathy for the victims' families.
Sandy Hook Elementary will be closed next week - some parents can't even conceive of sending their children back, Leidlein said - and officials are deciding what to do about the town's other schools.
Asked whether the town would recover, Maryann Jacob, a clerk in the school library who took cover in a storage room with 18 fourth-graders during the shooting rampage, said: "We have to. We have a lot of children left."
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jim Fitzgerald, Bridget Murphy, Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Newtown; Adam Geller in Southbury, Conn.; and Stephen Singer in Hartford, Conn.
Maybe this is one of the answers.
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http://www.washingtonguardian.com/washingtons-school-security-failure
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0bama let school security money go away.
hey hey hey  ok the mnedia has milke this out long enough.  lets all watch the sunday talks and get back to the fiscal cliff!    they may strike a deal that will save 800 billion over 10 years!  (dont bother thinking about the 1.1 trillion we add to deficit every year)  hahahhaha why do we have a deficit? answer/ phony made up wars...lazy ebt grabbing dirtbags....zillions of illegles...waste fraud and corruption. and we are all too lazy to stop it. so lets watch the implosion together in the spirit of amusement!  im happy i like ramen and frozen veggies.
"On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all of them were apparently shot more than once." Â (from the story)
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Am I dreaming, or did they not say earlier that this guy went to the school with 3 guns... he had 2 handguns and 1 rifle...BUT that the rifle was found afterwards in the trunk of his car..??? Â Â But the ME is saying that all these people were shot with a RIFLE..! Â
So what have I missed here..?
The news media make too much hype when reporting things like this. Morgan Freeman nailed it.
TURN OFF THE NEWS.......Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday :"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody. CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next. You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
These action-drama kinds of stories fuel people's angst and fear, and read like porn to unbalanced people with a mass-murder fetish.
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I appreciate the official's comments but I the way this story is being presented in the media reminds me of my days in Dr. Foltz' Media Ethics and Law classes at OSU.
Since when does 'crazy' need a motive for anything?
I keep reading about people trying to find a safe place to hide. Maybe schools and malls should have bullet proof safety areas that can be secured. They could be used for earthquakes and tornadoes too.
 @special effects But they could also be used to commit serious crimes. At what price do we want our privacy vs. our safety? A rapist or murderer (or whatever criminally minded individual) might lock himself (or herself but, still, statistically not as likely) in that very space along with countless victims who have no way of getting out and are now at the mercy of this terrible person.
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During one of the remodels, Vancouver Mall installed a family restroom. It was a nice set up so women could go in and be comfortable breast feeding or toileting their young children. Then, in 2002, a repeat offender rapist cornered a young woman using the restroom area who had her young children with her. It was ugly. That's all I'll say about it. But, sadly, I could see one of these "safe" areas being used exactly for something like this. I wouldn't want that to happen, either.
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There is no absolute safety. There is no absolute freedom. There is only your own personal free will. This is why I tell people to trust their gut instincts and not challenge that feeling.
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As others have mentioned before, Gavin de Becker's book "The Gift of Fear" is very much worth reading and talks a great deal about this visceral human survival skill that, over time, we have learned to ignore far more often than we should.
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Short of putting everyone in self-contained bullet-proof bubbles (again, they have other problems -- like the lack of physical contact and how damaging that can be to us humans, too), I don't have a solution. I've just learned I HAVE to trust my instincts. Anything less would be an injustice to my ancestors.
 @CTWU  @special effects "Then, in 2002, a repeat offender rapist cornered a young woman using the restroom area who had her young children with her. It was ugly. That's all I'll say about it. "
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I remember that. People were terrified and a lot of people said they wouldn't go to that mall anymore. I don't think anything like that has happened since. These are freak occurences; humans, like all creatures, need to be aware but we can't go through life living in fear of going outside.
 @Playanekes  @special effects Exactly.
you can have my AR15 when you pry it from the dead hands of the punk who stole it from me
we always have to name someone a hero. the word gets tossed around like my long blonde locks.  cops are the true heros! Â
"There are a lot brighter stars up there tonight because of these kids."Â oh puleeez, its a tragedy but lets not go to fairyland about it.
I sure hope people remember the actions of this heroic principal the next time you want to called teachers overpaid, underworked, glorified babysitters who care more about their salary and benefits than they do about kids. Go to your child's school on Monday and give a teacher a hug and say thank you for all that you do.Â
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The Dunblane school massacre occurred at Dunblane Primary School in the Scottish town of Dunblane on 13 March 1996. The gunman, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton (b. 10 May 1952), entered the school armed with four handguns, shooting and killing sixteen children and one adult before committing suicide. Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre and the 2010 Cumbria shootings, it remains one of the worst criminal acts involving firearms in the history of the United Kingdom. Public debate subsequent to these events centred on gun-control laws, including media-driven public petitions calling for a ban on private ownership of handguns and an official enquiry, the Cullen Report. In response to this debate, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 were enacted, which effectively made private ownership of handguns illegal in the United Kingdom.
 @fracas How are you going to come and take 300 million guns in America?
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You're not going to make private ownership of handguns illegal in America but if you do, you're still not going to get them from people who are willing to break the law.
God bless this principal...she tried so hard to protect. I find it almost preordained...her last name in German means "high jump"...Hoch (high)...sprung (to spring, or jump).
wut bout da frisky cliff?
 @the rover Frisky cliff doesn't bleed...
 @str1ngb3nd3r  @the rover Frisky cliff ain't got time to bleed.
Why did his mother have FIVE guns in the house when this murderer was already identified for mental disorders? In fact, why did she have ANY guns in the house in that circumstance?
 @Old29 Exactly!!!  Now if she wasn't a teacher at the school what was her job?  She had to know her son was unbalanced.  Why didn't she have the lock on.  Time will tell us more.
If the principal had been able to neutralize the guy or defend herself with ANY sort of weapon she might have saved some lives. Piers Morgan and his crowd would tell you that is hero might have "snapped" and killed a bunch of children. The Portland Public School system's emergency plan is similar; throw defenseless bodies in front of the gun until the police arrive.
 @Playanekes Portland Public has NO emergency system for this.  Many of their doors between building are unlocked.  When I taught there I didn't even have inside locks on the class door to
lock it from the inside. Â Doors didn't have curtains or blinds to close.
The common earthquake drill in PPS is to get under a desk or table. Â Our table was so flimsy it would not have protected us. Aside from that the students couldn even all fit under it. Â It was a 3 story brick building would have come down on us anyway. Having taught in CA on the fault years before so I knew exactly what an earthquake felt like. I told my students if I said get out of the buildling and run to the playground, NOW. To run like heck and get out of the building. Â The principal could get mad at me later. One time a busload of middle schoolers got off their stop by the school and started to menacingly approach the building. The particular principal, who was a man, locked himself in his office. Â 20 years ago. Three classroom teachers went out and talked them down. Â I witnessed it. Â I loved my kids ant that school but never felt completely safe. Putting a teacher and her kids in a downstairs closet (sp ed) should never be allowed. Â I seen teachers teach in bathrooms there. (esl) Parents need to demand and make the schools responsible for their child's safety.
 @Playanekes So true.  It is a horrific thing that happened.  But when people start thinking how they can stop this sort of thing, they never seem to realize that, in a country based on freedom, the only way you could ever possibly stop this type of thing from happening is if this became a completely locked down society with police/military on every block in every office, etc.  Do we really want to live that way?  Maybe some do, but should we ever get there those people will most likely be the ones lamenting "what have we done?"
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Praying for the families and friends of those who were killed and also for those who lived through it. Â
 @Playanekes Oh, and I forgot to add, that even with police/military on every block and in every office, what is to stop one of them (as they are people too and just as prone to snapping as anyone else) from doing this type of thing.  Nothing, that is.