Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre: photos, reactions and Ryan and Adam Lanza
AT the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut 27 28 people have been murdered – 18 22 of which are children. The school teaches children aged 5 to 10. The suspect is named by the HuffPo and others as Ryan Lanza. That’s wrong.
The Post is now reporting that the shooter was Adam Lanza, 20, and that his brother Ryan is not considered a suspect. Adam is dead. Ryan is being questioned by police.
His divorced mother, Nancy Jean Lanza, taught at the school. It is thought Adam Lanza killed her at her home before heading to the school.
He murdered with this gun.
@HuffPostMedia: CNN says the shooter is named Ryan Lanza
Lieutenant Paul Vance tells media: “The scene is secure, the situation is secure, we will notify you when we come back for a briefing as quickly as we can.”
The White House says today not the day to discuss gun control. They’re wrong. It is. The time is ripe.
davidfrum@davidfrum Shooting at CT elementary school. Obviously, we need to lower the age limit for concealed carry so toddlers can defend themselves.
Elsewhere:
“On the tenth day of Christmas the @NRA gave to me, an elementary school slaughter,” tweeted @tbogg.
CNN reports that one parent who was inside the school when the attack happened “heard what sounded like at least 100 rounds being fired.”
Parents get a letter:
Dear Members of our Sandy Hook Family,
Our district will be implementing a security system in all elementary schools as part of our ongoing efforts to ensure student safety. As usual, exterior doors will be locked during the day. Every visitor will be required to ring the doorbell at the front entrance and the office staff will use a visual monitoring system to allow entry. Visitors will still be required to report directly to the office and sign in. If our office staff does not recognize you, you will be required to show identification with a picture id. Please understand that with nearly 700 students and over 1000 parents representing 500 SHS families, most parents will be asked to show identification.
Doors will be locked at approximately 9:30 a.m. Any student arriving after that time must be walked into the building and signed in at the office. Before that time our regular drop-off procedures will be in place. I encourage all parents to have their children come to school and return home on the bus and to remain in school for the entire school day. The beginning and ending of our school day are also important instructional times and therefore we want all our students to reap the benefits of full participation in our program.
We need your help and cooperation for our system to work effectively. Our office staff is handling multiple tasks. Though they will work diligently to help you into the building as quickly as possible, there may be a short delay until someone can view you on the handset and allow you to come in electronically. There are times during the day when office personnel are on the telephone, addressing student concerns, or in the copy room; there are other times when only one person is in the front office. Please help our staff by identifying yourself and provide your child’s name.
Keep in mind we will be following our district guidelines which may need revision once we test the system.
Please know your involvement continues to be critical to our school’s effectiveness and your child’s success. We continue to encourage and value your presence in our classrooms and are counting on your cooperation with the implementation of this safety initiative.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Hochsprung
Currently, at least one entire classroom of children and teachers is “missing.”
RT @RobertDEdwards: BREAKING: NBC’s Pete Williams reports a parent of the suspected shooter has been found dead at a home in New Jersey.
Matt Spence writes: “According to the Brady Center for Gun Violence, 94,113 people have been shot in America this year. 153 people have been shot in the US just today.”
Yesterday the Michigan State Senate passed a law permitting concealed weapons in schools and daycares.
The Times:
President Obama has ordered all flags in the US flown at half-staff until sunset on Tuesday. The President is due to speak in 5 minutes from the podium in the James Brady briefing room in the White House.
The room’s namesake, Jim Brady, was Ronald Reagan’s press secretary who was paralysed in the 1981 assassination attempt on Mr Reaga in Washington, DC. He and his family have since been the leading campaigners in the US for tighter gun control laws through the nonprofit Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
A friend of man who seems to have bene wrongly identified as the killer, Ryan Lanza, notes on twitter:
Andrew Fletcher @Fletch788@lcilmi I’m watching a live stream of WNBC and they’re interviewing an 8-year-old. Come on.
Who is Ryan Lanza?
The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has news:
Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
Obama speaks:
This afternoon, I spoke with Governor Malloy and FBI Director Mueller. I offered Governor Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation, and made it clear he will have every single resource that he needs to investigate this heinous crime, care for the victims, counsel their families.
We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news I react not as a President, but as anybody else would — as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.
The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers — men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams.
So our hearts are broken today — for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost. Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.
As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago — these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight. And they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans. And I will do everything in my power as President to help.
Because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need — to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories but also in ours.
May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.
The media are interviewing 8 years olds!
An eight-year-old student described how a teacher saved him from bullets at his Newtown, Conn., elementary school Friday morning, where at least 27 people were killed by a gunman.
The student told WCBS-TV’s Lou Young he was on the way to the school’s office when he saw bullets.
“I saw some of the bullets going down the hall that I was right next to and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom,” the student said.
“It sounded like someone was kicking a door,” he said of the bullets.
On twitter:
RT @piersmorgan: It’s not ‘anti-American’ to want mass shootings to stop in the United States. It’s ‘pro-American’. #GunControlNow
The Mayor of New York, chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns:
With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.
Ban it:
That’s glib.
The New Yorker’s editor in chief David Remnick wants Barack Obama to act:
Barack Obama has been in our field of vision for a long time now, and, more than any major politician of recent memory, he hides in plain sight. He is who he is. He may strike the unsympathetic as curiously remote or arrogant or removed; he certainly strikes his admirers as a man of real intelligence and dignity. But he is who he is. He is no phony. And so there is absolutely no reason to believe that his deep, raw emotion today following the horrific slaughter in Connecticut-his tears, the prolonged catch in his voice-was anything but genuine. But this was a slaughter-a slaughter like so many before it-and emotion is hardly all that is needed. What is needed is gun control-strict, comprehensive gun control that places the values of public safety and security before the values of deer hunting and a perverse ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment. Obama told the nation that he reacted to the shootings in Newtown “as a parent,” and that is understandable, but what we need most is for him to act as a President, liberated at last from the constraints of elections and their dirty compromises-a President who dares to change the national debate and the legislative agenda on guns.
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. But that’s unacceptable. 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.
MICK HUCKABEE:
Ultimately, you can take away every gun in America and somebody will use a bomb. When somebody has an intent to do incredible damage, they’re going to find a way to do it… People will want to pass new laws, but unless you change people’s hearts, they’re our transition to the pastor side. This is a heart issue, it’s not something, laws don’t change this kind of thing.
Posted: 14th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
