Weapon in the wrong hands

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

On December 14, 2012, sometime before 9:30 a.m., Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy Lanza, aged 52, with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle at their Newtown home. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in his mother's car.

At Sandy hook Elementary school, 456 children were enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade. 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 9:30 a.m. each day, after morning arrivals.

Under Connecticut law 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.

Shortly after 9:35 a.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 locked front entrance doors of the school.

Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were meeting with other faculty members when they heard but did not recognize 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 to the danger and saved their lives. 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 lay 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.

Diane Day, a school therapist who had been at the faculty meeting with Hochsprung, heard screaming followed by more gunshots. A second teacher, who was a substitute kindergarten teacher, was wounded in the attack. While she was closing a door further down the hallway, she was hit in the foot with a bullet that ricocheted. Lanza never entered her classroom.

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 (a behavioral therapist who had been employed for a week at the school to work with a special needs student), and fifteen 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 declared dead.

Most of the teachers and students were found crowded together in the bathroom. 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.

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, and pointed the gun at a boy seated there, but did not fire. The boy ran out of the classroom.