Newtown Teacher: I Hid Kids in Coat Closet
Connie Sullivan, a teacher at Newtown Elementary School, barricaded her students in a closet to protect them from the shooter.
The grieving suburb of Newtown, Conn. faces another day with the biggest question—Why?—still unanswered. But they now know who is gone.
The official list of victims went up on the Connecticut State Police's website Saturday afternoon, and to see it in black and white, with so many names, and with dates of birth as late as 2006, was a stark reminder of what the town of 28,000 had lost.
The news was accompanied by a methodical account from the state's chief medical examiner of how 12 girls, eight boys and six women were gunned down with remarkable efficiency—each hit at least twice—by a young man armed with a .223 Bushmaster rifle inside Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The killer, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who took his own life as cops closed in Friday morning, still has not been official identified, and neither has his mother, Nancy, who was found shot to death in their home nearby. Autopsies on their bodies will be conducted last.
Lanza's father released a statement saying his remaining family was "grieving," heartbroken" and "struggling to make sense of what has transpired."
"Our hearts go out to the families and friends who lost loved ones and to all those who were injured," Peter Lanza wrote. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why."
President Barack Obama will visit Sunday to try to console the town, meeting with victims' families and then speaking at an interfaith vigil. "Every parent in America has a heart heavy with hurt," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
As the picture-postcard town in southwestern Connecticut struggled to find its footing, new details emerged about how the attack unfolded.
Lanza apparently shot his way into the school, shattering the front door glass around 9:30 a.m.
Morning announcements were underway, and witnesses remembered hearing screams and gunshots over the PA system.
Others recalled a custodian running down the hall, yelling that there was a gunman.
Teacher Kaitlin Roig described huddling in a bathroom with her 15 first-grade students, trying to assure them that everything would be alright—even though she didn't believe it.
"I'm thinking, 'We're next,'" Roig told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "And I'm thinking, as a 6-year-old, 7-year-old, what are your thoughts? I'm thinking I almost have to be their parent. So I said to them, I need you to know that I love you all very much, and it's going to be okay, because I thought that was the last thing they were ever going to hear."
The school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were in a meeting with a parent, other staff members and school therapist Diane Day when the shooting started, Day told The Wall Street Journal. While most people dove under desks, Hochsprung and Sherlach rushed to see if they could help and ran toward the shooter, schools Superintendent Janet Robinson said.
Hochsprung, 47, a mother of five who viewed her school as a model of opportunity and safety, and Sherlach, 56, who was planning her retirement, were both killed.
Another teacher pressed her body against to door to keep Lanza out—and was shot twice in the process, Day said.
Kindergarten teacher Janet Vollmer recalled hearing the attack unfold over the intercom. She told CBS 2 she tried keep her 19 students calm by telling them a custodian was probably on the roof retrieving a soccer ball. Then she and her aides drew the shades and locked the classroom door.
A half hour passed, and finally police arrived to escort them out. On the way, she noticed blood on the floor. "I don't know whether any of them saw that—we kept going," Vollmer said.
Another teacher helped students get out through a window, Robinson said, and one hid the students in the kiln room as the shooter made his way through the school.
Police reportedly had the students hold hands and close their eyes as they were led from the building.
By 11:03 a.m., officers said the school had been evacuated and was secure. They went to the Lanza home and found the gunman's mother dead of a gunshot wound. Despite earlier reports, it did not appear she was a staff member at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Court records showed that Lanza's parents had divorced in 2008 after 17 years of marriage, according to The New York Times, which added that Peter Lanza had moved out of the family's home.
The rifle and handguns Adam Lanza carried in the attacks were reportedly owned by his mother, a firearms enthusiast. They appeared to have been purchased legally.
State Police spokesman Paul Vance said investigators had uncovered "very good evidence" that might help explain Adam Lanza's motive.
Former classmates described him as very intelligent and introverted, and quick with computers. Some have suggested that he may have suffered from a personality disorder.
He had no obvious recent ties to the school, and those who had known him as a young, awkward teenager could think of nothing that would have predicted such inexplicable rage.
"We've been doing everything we need to do to peel back the onion, layer by layer, and get more information," Vance said.
Investigators spent hours questioning Lanza's 24-year-old brother Ryan, who told them that Adam had a history of mental health issues and that they had not spoken in two years, NBC News reported.
The state's chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver, said the case was probably the "worst that I have seen" in his more than 30 years on the job. He performed autopsies of seven of the victims, all of whom had between three and 11 bullet wounds.
Asked whether the victims suffered, Carver said, "Not for very long." Asked where on their bodies they were shot, and he said, "all over." Asked how many rounds were fired, and he replied, "lots."
The victims were identified by showing relatives pictures of their faces in order to spare them additional grief.
As the investigation continues, state troopers have been assigned to the parents so the information is communicated directly to them, police said.
With the release of the names, portraits of the victims' lives began to take shape.
They included first-grade teacher Victoria Soto, 27, whose family said they were told by investigators that she was killed while trying to protect her first-graders from the gunfire.
"She was trying to shield, get her children into a closet and protect them from harm," a cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC. "And by doing that, put herself between the gunman and the children."
Teacher Anne Marie Murphy, 52, was also among the staffers who died trying to protect her students from the gunman, her family said.
Lauren Gabrielle Rousseau, 30, had just realized her dream of becoming a full-time teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary. "It was the best year of her life," her mother said.
Among the dead children was first-grader Olivia Engel, whose "only crime was being a wiggly, smiley 6 year old," a family friend said.
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6, had just moved to Newtown a few months ago from Puerto Rico, her grandmother said. Her family was attracted to Sandy Hook's safe reputation.
Chase Kowalski, 7, was an athletic kid, always on the move, who bragged to a neighbor about winning a mini triathlon.
Emilie Parker, 6, was a girl who was always smiling, always willing to try new things, as long as those new things didn't involve food, her father said. "I'm so blessed to be her dad," he said.
"Those educators, and those innocent little boys and girls were taken from their families far too soon," Gov. Danell Malloy said. "Let us all hope and pray those children are now in a place where that innocence will forever be protected."
The release of the names was a dreaded but anxiously awaited moment as the town—and the nation—struggles to absorb the second-deadliest school shooting in American history, second only to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that killed 32.
With so many unattainable answers, Newtowners sought solace amongst each other, flocking to vigils and religious services and building spontaneous memorials to the victims around town.
In the downtown district of the Sandy Hook neighborhood Saturday night, where Church Hill Road and Washington Avenue intersect, paper bags lit with candles, one for every victim, flickered beneath the local Christmas tree. Passersby added flowers, votives, and two smaller Christmas trees decorated with children's ornaments and topped by angels. They wrote notes to the victims and their families, promising to pray for them, and their town. Some brought their young children and struggled to explain what it all meant.
Across the street, in front of an office building, someone had erected a sign made of Christmas lights that read "FAITH," "HOPE" and "LOVE."
Outside Sandy Hook Wine and Liquor, an American flag on poster board was propped on a bench. Owner Mike Kerler and his wife made cards with each of the victims' names and affixed them to the flag.
Kerler, whose four children attended Sandy Hook Elementary, was glad to see the names released, he said, because it will allow the community to step up in support of them, neighbor to neighbor. The victims included a girl who lived across the street from him, he said. "I'm still searching for something we can do," Kerler said. "We just want to let them know we're thinking about them and we care."
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