A shooting occurred early this morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., about 60 miles northeast of New York City. The shooting left 27 dead including the shooter, 6 school employees and 20 children. The death toll of the Columbine High School shooting was 15, making the tragedy at Sandy Hook the worst non-university school shooting in U.S. history.
The first call to Police was made around 9:30 a.m. and local enforcement immediately called in the State Police as well as the SWAT team and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF.
Police have only identified the shooter as a white male in his twenties. State officials are hesitant to release the shooter’s name out of fear that it will inhibit their ongoing investigation.
However the Associated Press has reported that the shooter was Adam Lanza, 20. Previous reports had identified his brother Ryan Lanza, 24, as the shooter however it has now been revealed that Ryan was only questioned about the incident.
An unidentified male was taken into custody and escorted out of nearby woods shortly after the shooting. Police have stated that this man is not a suspect but was questioned about the shootings and CNN reporters on the scene said that he stared directly into a parent’s eyes and said, “I did not do it.”
In a press conference earlier this evening, Conn. State Police Lt. Paul stated that “right now” there was only “one shooter.”
Sandy Hook holds about 600 students in kindergarten through fourth grade; ages five through ten. While the exact ages of the victims remain unknown Lt. Vance said that all of the shooting occurred in two rooms of the school.
The mother of the Ryan and Adam, Nancy Lanza, 52, was a kindergarten teacher at Sandy Hook and was killed. It is unclear, however, if she was killed at the school or at a Newtown home that police are calling a secondary crime scene where, according to Lt. Vance, “there is an adult deceased.”
Two of the confirmed victims as well as the vice-principal, who was the only person to receive a survivable injury (a shot to the foot), had left a meeting and went into the hallway after hearing banging and gunfire.
One of those victims was school principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, who took the position in 2010. Hochsprung has two daughters and three stepdaughters, the ages of those children are unknown.
In July 2010, Hochsprung told the local Newton Bee, “I don’t think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day.”
The other victim who had gone into the hallway was the school psychologist, whose name has not yet been identified.
Throughout the day, state and local grief counselors had been at the school and the nearby firehouse that acted as a shelter for students and family members.
Among those counselors was a local rabbi, who admitted to CNN that he didn’t know exactly what to say to comfort those who lost children, friends and teachers, in order to ease the pain but said that they could “try.”
Tomorrow, the FBI crisis management team will arrive in Newtown to help with the victim’s families and also the first responders who saw what LT. Vance calls a “very horrific and difficult scene.”
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