Many shots; so many wounds

From all avenues: Sorrow

A man weeps while praying in front of a memorial for shooting victims outside Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Conn., Saturday.
A man weeps while praying in front of a memorial for shooting victims outside Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Conn., Saturday.

— All of the children killed by a gunman at a Connecticut elementary school were shot multiple times, according to the state’s chief medical examiner, who said it was the worst scene he had witnessed in three decades examining crime scenes.

Residents stunned and saddened by the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut have begun to place flowers at a small, but growing memorial at the school entrance.

Raw: Flowers Brought to School Shooting Site

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Some of the deadliest school shootings in the U.S. (AP)

  • Dec. 14, 2012: 20-year-old Adam Lanza forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where he killed 20 children and six adults with a high-power rifle before taking his own life. The investigation revealed that Lanza had also killed his mother shortly before the shooting at the school.
  • April 2, 2012: A gunman killed seven people in a rampage at a California Christian university. Jongjin Kim, the Oikos University, said the suspect, One Goh, was angry because administrators refused to grant him a full tuition refund after he dropped out of the nursing program.
  • Feb. 27, 2012: Three students were killed and two wounded in a shooting spree that started in a school cafeteria in Chardon, Ohio, as students waited for buses to other schools. Police have charged T.J. Lane, who was 17 at the time, as an adult.
  • Feb. 14, 2008: Former student Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., fatally shooting five students and wounding 18 others before committing suicide.
  • April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then killed himself.
  • Oct. 2, 2006: Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot to death five girls at West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania, then killed himself.
  • March 21, 2005: Jeffrey Weise, 16, shot and killed five schoolmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota before taking his own life. Weise had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion.
  • Oct. 28, 2002: Robert Flores Jr., 41, who was flunking out of the University of Arizona nursing school, shot and killed three of his professors before killing himself.
  • March 5, 2001: Charles “Andy” Williams, 15, killed two fellow students and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, Calif.
  • April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library.
  • May 21, 1998: Two teenagers were killed and more than 20 people hurt when Kip Kinkel, 17, opened fire at a high school in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents.
  • March 24, 1998: Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, killed four girls and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Ark., middle school. Ten others were wounded in the shooting.
  • Dec. 1, 1997: Three students were killed and five wounded at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. Michael Carneal, then 14, later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and is serving life in prison.
  • Oct. 1, 1997: Luke Woodham, 16, of Pearl, Miss., fatally shot two students and wounded seven others after stabbing his mother to death. He was sentenced the following year to three life sentences.

“This is a very devastating set of injuries,” said Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, the chief medical examiner for the state. He said it appeared that all of the children were killed with a long rifle, one of several weapons police recovered from the school.

Carver said parents were shown photos of their children to spare them from seeing the gruesome results of the shooting rampage, which left 20 children and six adults dead at the school in Newtown.

The gunman, identified by law-enforcement officials as Adam Lanza, shot and killed his mother at their home before going to the school, then killed himself after the rampage. Carver said his office had not yet completed examinations of Lanza and his mother.

Carver said that in the seven autopsies he performed in the shooting, each victim had three to 11 wounds.

Asked how many bullets were fired, Carver said, “I’m lucky if I can tell you how many I found.”

Asked if the children suffered, he paused. “If so,” he said, “not for very long.”

With the examinations complete and the victims’ families notified, authorities released the names of those killed. They ranged in age from 6-56. The children — 12 girls and eight boys — were all first-graders. One little girl had just turned 7 on Tuesday. All of the slain adults were women.

The White House announced that President Barack Obama would visit Newtown tonight to meet with victims’ families and speak at an interfaith vigil.

On Saturday, as families began to claim the bodies of slain loved ones, some sought privacy. Others spoke out. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among the dead, choked back tears as he described her as “bright, creative and very loving.”

But, he added, “as we move on from what happened here, what happened to so many people, let us not let it turn into something that defines us.”

On a day of anguish and mourning, other details emerged about how but not why the devastating attack happened.

The Newtown school superintendent said the principal and the school psychologist had been shot and killed as they tried to tackle the gunman in order to protect their students.

The superintendent, Janet Robinson, said teachers and staff members who were caught up in the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting had managed to save students’ lives with “incredible acts of heroism.” She said one teacher had helped children escape through a window. Another shoved students into a room with a kiln and held them there until the danger had passed.

On Friday morning, first responders at the school described a scene of carnage in the two classrooms where the children were killed. They found no movement and no one left to save, everything perfectly still.

Lanza had grown up in Newtown and had an uncle who had been a police officer in New Hampshire. The uncle, James M. Champion, issued a statement expressing “heartfelt sorrow,” adding that the family was struggling “to comprehend the tremendous loss we all share.”

Peter Lanza, the father of Adam Lanza, also issued a statement, saying: “We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired.”

A spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, Lt. J. Paul Vance, said investigators were continuing to hunt for information about Adam Lanza and had collected “some very good evidence.” He also said the one survivor of the massacre, a woman who was shot and wounded at the school, will be “instrumental” in piecing together what happened there.

Vance could provide no explanation for the massacre that unfolded with chilling speed as Lanza opened fire in one classroom and then another, turning a place where children were supposed to be safe — an elementary school with a sign out front that said “Visitors Welcome” — into a national symbol of heartbreak and horror.

He said the victims’ bodies had been taken from the school, Sandy Hook Elementary, but he added that investigators remained on the scene, looking for potential clues. He declined to describe the evidence that investigators had found.

Officials said the Friday killings began at the house where Adam Lanza had lived with his mother, Nancy Lanza. He shot her in the face, making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, after taking three guns that apparently belonged to her, he climbed into her car for the short drive to the school. A .223-caliber Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle was one of several weapons police found in the school. The other guns were semiautomatic pistols, including a 10mm Glock and a 9mm Sig Sauer.

Outfitted in combat gear, Lanza apparently defeated the intercom system. That contradicted earlier reports that he had been recognized and allowed to enter the school.

“He was not voluntarily let into the school at all,” Vance said. “He forced his way in.”

Vance’s account was consistent with recordings of police dispatchers who answered call after call from adults at the school. “The front glass has been broken,” one dispatcher warned officers who were rushing there, repeating on the police radio what a 911 caller had said on the phone. “They are unsure why.”

The dispatchers kept up a running account of the drama at the school.

“The individual I have on the phone indicates continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire,” one dispatcher said.

Soon, another dispatcher reported that the “shooting appears to have stopped,” and the conversation on the official radios turned to making sure that help was available — enough help.

“What is the number of ambulances you will require?” a dispatcher asked.

The answer hinted at the unthinkable scope of the tragedy: “They are not giving us a number.”

Another radio transmission, apparently from someone at the school, underlined the desperation of the moment: “You might want to see if the surrounding towns can send EMS personnel. We’re running out real quick, real fast.”

Officers later reported that it was oddly silent in the school when they rushed in with their rifles drawn. There were dead and dying in one section of the building, while elsewhere, those who had eluded the bullets were under orders from their teachers to remain hidden and quiet.

After gunning down the children and the school employees, authorities said, Lanza killed himself. A law-enforcement official said investigators had not found a suicide note or writings that spoke to the planning of such a deadly attack. And Robinson, the superintendent, said they had found no connection between Lanza’s mother and the school, in contrast to accounts from authorities Friday that said she had worked there.

New details emerged Saturday about how teachers and school staff members scrambled to move children to safety as the massacre began.

Maryann Jacob, a library clerk, said she initially herded students behind a bookcase against a wall “where they can’t be seen.” She said that spot had been chosen in practice drills for school lockdowns, but on Friday, she had to move the pupils to a storage room “because we discovered one of our doors didn’t lock.”

Jacob said the storage room had crayons and paper that were torn up for the children to color on while they waited.

“They were asking what was going on,” she said. “We said: ‘We don’t know. Our job is just to be quiet.”’ But, she said, she did know, because she had called the school office and learned that the unthinkable had happened just steps away.

C.J. Hoekenga, a fourthgrader at the school, was in music class watching The Nutcracker when he heard bangs, heavy breathing and then shots. His teacher told the students to get into a closet, the youngster said.

He and classmates said prayers until a police officer arrived. They then exited single-file and ran to a nearby fire station, he said.

Elise Beier, 10, also a fourthgrader, said she could hear the gunfire and shouting over the public-address system, which remained on throughout the shooting.

When police arrived, the occupants in one room were so afraid that they opened the doors only after an officer showed his badge through the window, Jacob said.

Vance said the authorities were “investigating the history of each and every weapon” that Lanza had carried to the school, but he provided no details to confirm reports that the weapons had apparently been registered to Lanza’s mother. Vance said the guns were found in the school, “in close proximity” to where Lanza killed himself.

The president, meanwhile, used his weekly radio and Internet address to mourn the victims, saying “every parent in America has a heart heavy with hurt.”

The president’s address was similar to a statement he read in the White House pressroom Friday, when he paused more than once to wipe his eyes.

“Our hearts are broken today,” Obama said in his address. He mentioned other places where there had been mass shootings this year, including a mall in Oregon, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and a movie theater in Colorado, as well as “countless street corners in places like Chicago and Philadelphia.”

“Any of these neighborhoods could be our own,” Obama said. “So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

House Speaker John Boehner canceled the Republican rebuttal to the president’s weekly address out of respect for the victims.

School Board Chairman Debbie Leidlein spent Friday night meeting with parents of the slain 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.”

The tragedy plunged Newtown into mourning and added the picturesque New England community of handsome colonial homes, redbrick 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.

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 about the school tragedy.

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, Jacob, the library clerk, said: “We have to. We have a lot of children left.”

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The New York Times, The Associated Press, the Tribune Washington Bureau and Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/16/2012

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