NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A gunman opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school where his mother worked Friday, killing at least 26 people, including 18 children, by blasting his way through the building as young students cowered helplessly in classrooms while their teachers and classmates were shot.
The attack, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, appeared to be the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.
The death toll — 26 victims plus the gunman — was given to The Associated Press by an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.
Panicked parents raced to Sandy Hook Elementary School, about 60 miles northeast of New York City, looking for their children in the wake of the shooting. Students were told to close their eyes by police as they were led from the building.
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.
A photo taken by The Newtown Bee newspaper showed a group of young students — some crying, others looking visibly frightened — being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.
The suspect was 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, whose mother, Nancy, works at the school, a law enforcement official said. His younger brother was being held for questioning as a possible second shooter, the official said.
Ryan Lanza's girlfriend and another friend were missing in New Jersey, the official also said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.
Students and staff were among the victims, state police Lt. Paul Vance said a brief news conference. He also said the gunman was dead inside the school, but he refused to say how people were killed.
Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter was in the school and heard two big bangs. Teachers told her to get in a corner, he said.
"It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said. His daughter was fine.
Andrea Rynn, a spokeswoman at the hospital, said it had three patients from the school but she did not have information on the extent or nature of their injuries.
Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and ran to check on his 9-year-old sister at the school. He said his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.
"Everyone was just traumatized," he said.
Richard Wilford's 7-year-old son, Richie, is in the second grade at the school. His son told him that he heard a noise that "sounded like what he described as cans falling."
The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.
"There's no words," Wilford said. "It's sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him."
The White House said Barack Obama was notified of the shooting and his spokesman Jay Carney said the president had "enormous sympathy for families that are affected."
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Associated Press writers Jim Fitzgerald in Newtown, Pete Yost in Washington, D.C., and Michael Melia in Hartford contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
Comments (76)
Add commenteyolf "
We all seem to understand what's being talked about, so what's the big deal?" WRONG
The big deal is: The majority of the people Don't Understand what's being talked about and a lot of the people are using the term "assult rifle" incorrectly on purpose to further their political agenda. Those same people want the 2nd Amendment to go away.
Second Amendment
I wonder what the Founding Fathers had in mind for the Second Amendment? What did they foresee that it would protect and defend? What had happened to them and their right to private gun ownership that made them feel they needed to ensure through legislation the rights of the people to own arms?
South
To protect/defend ourselves from future d feinstein's/libs like you!!
One response.
"The point of the second amendment was to challenge King George's standing army. The new nation was not going to have a standing army, but to have militias. The amendment specifically says that the right to bear arms is to maintain a militia, not for you to feel like a superhero. Also, the weapons of the day were cannon, muskets, Kentucky long rifles, etc being used in a frontier society. We are not that anymore. We have a standing army. If more people read and understood history, they would realize how silly the entire 2nd amendment argument is."
Stupid and silly
are related and I need not say more except there are almost as many gun owners in the US as there were voters in the last election. If you libs try to take the 2nd Amendment away you Will lose. The largest army in the world is the private "militia" here and that's why we aren't invaded from without. From within we have a problem with a lot of freedom hating traitors.
P.S. southie,
if the Founding Fathers saw what you liberals are doing with the children today and our other rights they would probally revolt again.
This tragedy
IS NOT the time/ place to exploit what you're trying to do south!!!!
. . . and then again, maybe the time/place to figure all of
this out might be precisely right now. Ezra Klein says it much better than I could:
"When we first collected much of this (following) data, it was after the Aurora, Colo.(theater) shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”
Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.
" . . . If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late." (Ezra Klein, Washington Post, from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-ab....
Obviously, none of us has all the answers as to how to prevent these tragedies (or we wouldn't keep being terrorized by them), but we need to focus our national attention on fixing this . . . now.
So Bubba,
go ahead and get the Left to allow God back into the school curriculum. These shootings didn't happen until you progressive/athiest/evolutionals had enough years of your teaching agenda intertwined into the communist/lefter welfare plot.
The problem isn't guns it's the culture in control. ( I'm not saying just Obama, either.)
Unfortunately, if it isn't the time,
It will be ignored again. What changes came after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Cold Spring, Red Lake? None.
Criticize or ignore me, but many feel like me right now.
Well, I'm glad to see you still
jump to conclusions without any proof. I don't own a single semi-automatic "almost assult" gun. Now that that's out of the way, I still say that if you and your panty-waisted liberal friends don't want to own guns then don't buy them. If you don't want to pass the knowledge and use of them down then don't. BUT, don't for a single second attempt to take the rights of other people away that do. I was busy today also but your "image" lie kinda grated on me. Why don't you get the real facts before you slander people?
When kids are classically
When kids are classically conditioned like Pavlovian dogs by getting more points for the more people they kill in their video games, and our mainstream media promotes scumbag musicians who portray the image of being murderers and thugs, and the TV turns mass murderers into infamous house hold names and gives them the attention they so desperately craved, and when more than half the kids only have one parent to raise them, and every weekend millions of people flock to horror movies to enjoy watching people getting tortured and killed, and when kids are put on psychotropic drugs with suicidal and psychotic side effects simply because Big Pharma claims they’re energy and creativity is disruptive at school, what kind of children do you expect our culture to produce?
I know a couple parents who allow their young children to play these first person shooter games. They sit and play them all day long. In these games they are training themselves how to load the clip, how to activate the charging handle and how to kill. Even though within these games they die for only a few seconds, they get back up and continue the killing spree. If played all day long, they could quite possibly kill 1000's. It's a well known fact that the military industrial complex is heavily involved in the production of these games, because they are still searching for the perfect killer. One who does not think while in the act. Add psychotropic drugs into the mix and you have just created that perfect killer.
eyolf
I do agree with many of your points on the look of todays fire arms that tend to turn off a casual hunter like myself. The guns are only a part of this trend. I went to a gun show within the last year or so and was taken back by the wicked looking knives being displayed and sold there. It is the trend of many people that are brought up with the video games promoting killing. However, our own government with it's mercenary army that invades other countries at will and assassinates people around the world when they feel like it is a big cause for this trend. As the men in our country get feminized the ones with normal testosterone resist and some are probably over the line. After all, our state recently rejected the marriage amendment which indicates this trend regarding our men and women. The women of course appear to be coming up with the testosterone the men are losing.
For the record ...
... the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004, defined, listed and banned 19 guns considered to be assault weapons. These were all semi-automatic firearms, meaning that they can eject spent shell casings and chamber the next round without additional human action.
In addition to the 19 weapons specifically prohibited, the federal assault weapons ban also defined as a prohibited assault weapon any semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine and at least two of the following five items: a folding or telescopic stock; a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon; a bayonet mount; a flash suppressor or threaded barrel (a barrel that can accommodate a flash suppressor); or a grenade launcher.
The semi-automatic Bushmaster 223 used in Newtown is, by definition, an assault rifle.