Routine morning, then shots and unthinkable terror<cite id="yui_3_5_1_20_1355553964652_287" class="byline vcard">By By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN and JOCELYN NOVECK | Associated Press – <abbr id="yui_3_5_1_20_1355553964652_293" class="updated" title="2012-12-15T06:19:27Z">26 mins ago
</abbr></cite>NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — First, he killed his mother.
...
Nobody knows why 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother, why he then took her guns to the school and murdered 20 children and six adults.
But on Friday he drove his mother's car through this 300-year-old town with its fine old churches and towering trees and arrived at a school full of the season's joy. Somehow, he got past a security door to a place where children should have been safe from harm.
Theodore Varga and other fourth-grade teachers were meeting; the glow remained from the previous night's fourth-grade concert.
(Ed. This is what is called 'team planning time. In lower grades it's meeting all same grade teachers. In middle school it's all subject area teachers within a grade-thus 'team.' During these meetings the teachers discuss cross-curricular areas and try to reinforce the objectives of their lessons repetitively. There was likely coffee and homemade treats from teachers or parents. In the lower grades it's more to make sure that all students are getting the necessary content they need to. If there is a teacher who's not feeling comfortable about a certain subject area or lesson, the others are to give suggestions. Considering the comments, most of this planning was about how the kids were getting ready for the holidays, how next week would be 'crazy' with various assemblies and programs. Then the shots rang out...)
"It was a lovely day," Varga said. "Everybody was joyful and cheerful. We were ending the week on a high note."
And then, suddenly and unfathomably, gunshots rang out. "I can't even remember how many," he said.
The fourth-graders, the oldest children in the school, were in specialty classes like gym and music. There was no lock on the meeting room door, so the teachers had to think about how to escape, knowing that their students were with other teachers.
Someone turned the loudspeaker on, so everyone could hear what was happening in the office.
"You could hear the hysteria that was going on," Varga said. "Whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring."
Gathered in another room for a 9:30 a.m. meeting were principal Dawn Hochsprung and school therapist Diane Day along with a school psychologist, other staff members and a parent. They were meeting to discuss a second-grader.
"We were there for about five minutes chatting, and we heard Pop! Pop!, Pop!" Day told The Wall Street Journal. "I went under the table."
But Hochsprung and the psychologist leaped out of their seatsand ran out of the room, Day recalled. "They didn't think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on," she said.
Hochsprung was killed, and the psychologist was believed to have been killed as well.
A custodian ran around, warning people there was a gunman, Varga said.
"He said, 'Guys! Get down! Hide!'" Varga said. "So he was actually a hero."
Did he survive? The teacher did not know.
...
In a first-grade classroom, teacher Kaitlin Roig heard the shots. She immediately barricaded her 15 students into a tiny bathroom, sitting one of them on top of the toilet. She pulled a bookshelf across the door and locked it. She told the kids to be "absolutely quiet."
"I said, 'There are bad guys out there now. We need to wait for the good guys,'" she told ABC News.
"The kids were being so good," she said. "They asked, 'Can we go see if anyone is out there?' 'I just want Christmas. I don't want to die, I just want to have Christmas.' I said, 'You're going to have Christmas and Hanukkah.'"
...
Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher. "That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."
He said the shooter didn't utter a word.
___
"The shooting appears to have stopped," the dispatcher radioed at 9:38 a.m., according to the Post. "There is silence at this time. The school is in lockdown."
And at 9:46 a.m., an anguished voice from the school: "I've got bodies here. Need ambulances."
___
Carefully, police searched room to room, removing children and staff from harm's way. They found Adam Lanza, dead by his own hand after shooting up two classrooms; no officer fired a gun.
...
I hope I speak for all of us, today our hearts are broken
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by SassyLady
