Sandy Hook Elementary: A Tragedy We Will Never Forget
On Friday,
December 14th, 2012, a catastrophic event in a small town of
Connecticut, colored the nation with devastation. Twenty young children and six
innocent adults were murdered at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
This tragedy is now the second deadliest school shooting in US history and was reported
throughout news stations and across the globe. From the moment the first
responders were on the scene, news reports have covered every aspect of this
story, and will continue to report and develop well into the future as a result
of the momentum this event has created in gun law reform. The ways that this
story has adapted and evolved over time can be seen throughout many media and
news sources.
Every major news
establishment in the nation covered this incidence, and among those that were
the first to communicate details about that horrible day was CNN. One of their first published
stories on the event included the brief testimony of a parent inside the school
at the time but not much else. The information had come from a woman who had
concealed herself under a counter and immediately alerted the police after she
heard the first gunshots. Many other news stations picked up this story as well,
speculating on the death toll and the status of the shooter. The next day, CNN was able to give a description of what
the shooter was wearing, how many people had died, and a short history of the
town. The article explained that this tragedy was bound to leave a huge wake in
this small, close-knit community that had only had one homicide reported in the
last ten years (Candiotti and Aarthun) . The article
described that the shooter, Adam Lanza, was “heavily armed” and dressed in
“black fatigues”, but could not yet specify on the types of guns he used or his
motivation for the attack. Saturday, December 15th, an article also came
out in The Economist, and Britain
based news magazine, that declared that Adam Lanza’s mother was found killed in
her home in Newtown as well, supposedly killed by her son before he travelled
to the elementary school and later killed himself as police were closing in on
him.
Students and
faculty regarding the events of that day have given testimonies and eyewitness
reports to numerous news agencies. The Economist
cites a nine-year old boy who was in the school’s gym during the time of the
shooting; he said, “We were in the gym and heard loud bangs” (R.W.) . The student
explains that they hid in the gym’s closet and waited for police to escort them
out hours after. Later stories also indicated that students reportedly heard
screams and gunshots over the intercom at the start of Adam Lanza’s rampage
that sent a surge of terror through each person in the building that day. One
other student who spoke with reporters said, “I saw bullets going past,” before
he and another student were pulled into a classroom by a teacher who protected
them during the attack. A few days after the shooting, stories of heroic
teachers began to emerge into the public media sphere as well. On December 17th,
three days after the shooting, Matt Lauer on the Today Show interviewed three courageous teachers from Sandy Hook
Elementary that exemplified that heroism. Connie Sullivan, a third grade
teacher continuously told her terrified students “that they were loved, that
their mommies and daddies would be there soon” (Sullivan, Feda and Vollmer) . In her
interview, one can clearly see how much she deeply cares for her students and
the pride she had in them for supporting each other throughout the terrible event.
It is teachers and other individuals like Connie that will act as inspiration
and support in the healing process of this tiny town.
An
article in The Hartford Courant the
day after the shooting articulates that the Chief State Medical Examiner was
working to identify each of the victims. Each victim was shot between three and
eleven times, making the autopsies and the positive identification by parents a
difficult and painful process. The six adults and 18 of the 20 children who
died that day left the school in body bags, the two others died at a near by
hospital due to the extensive wounds. The article also communicates the heroic
actions of first grade teacher, Victoria Soto, who finished hiding all of her
students before being brutally killed by Adam Lanza (The Hartford
Courant) .
The week following
the shooting, NBC News began to
address the issue of gun laws because many of the victims continue to feel a
responsibility to protect other innocent families from awful events like this
one. In his address to the nation on the day of the attack, President Barak
Obama also opened the doors to a on-going debate regarding the control of guns
across the country. He said, “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the
last few years” (The Washington Post) , alluding to
recent events in Wisconsin, Colorado and Virginia. About two weeks after the shooting,
John Rosenthal wrote in the Huffington
Post, “We Are to Blame for the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre” (Rosenthal) . He claims
that, as citizens of the US we should take more responsibility for the laws our
Congressmen are passing, and each person needs to take an active role in
preventing future attacks like this. Even pro-gun rights advocates have begun
to reevaluate the ease of access that citizens have to assault rifles within
the US. Regardless of the proposed laws’ potential to prevent attacks like
Sandy Hook, change in gun laws will still decrease a high number of gun-related
deaths each year. However, an article in U.S.
News states, “Some also suggest that other issues aside from guns should be
the forefront of the national debate in the wake of the tragedy, including
violence in video games and access to mental healthcare in America” (Did the Sandy Hook Shooting Prove the Need for More Gun Control?) . Regardless
of what side a person is on in this on-going debate, the media has played a
huge role in causing people to act on the current laws. Gun control debates are
still continuing today.
Several weeks
after the shooting, an article in the Wall
Street Journal explored the reasons and motivation behind Adam Lanza’s
attack. The article indicates that a contributing factor to his behavior was a
snowballing affect of severe social isolation from all family and friends aside
from his mother, with whom he lived. It was reported that she took him to
shooting ranges in order to bond with him and it was her guns that he used to
kill her in her bed that morning and that he used at Sandy Hook Elementary.
However, his anti-social behavior is also proving to be troublesome in fully
investigating the last few years of his life before December (Audi, Kesling and Shallwani) . Further
investigation into Adam Lanza indicates that he felt he was in a direct
competition with Anders Behring Breivik who was responsible for brutally
murdering 77 people near Oslo, Norway in 2011. Lanza is said to have believed
Sandy Hook to be the easiest target with a concentrated group of people in
order to more efficiently kill a larger number of people in his effort to
challenge Breivik’s heinous record (Payne) .
Since the
shooting, many news sources including the Wall
Street Journal and CNN have
dedicated interactive webpages that pay tribute to each victim with a photo and
brief profile written by his or her loved ones. Media has played an important
role in giving a face and a name to each victim, making it much harder for
individuals to separate themselves from those who suffered in this terrible
event. News sources function as a call to action for people to begin a
much-needed change within the country. We must remember that there were more
than 27 victims that day. In addition to the family and friends of those that
were killed, this was also an incredibly traumatizing experience for the other
400 plus students and staff at Sandy Hook. The community will take time to
heal.
News stations and
sites divulge information about current events as it becomes available. With
events like the mass murder-suicide at Sand Hook Elementary School in December
2012, we can see these events play out at an hourly rate. The story has and
will continue to transform and progress over time, as new information is
uncovered. Reports of the event on December 14th will continue until
the official investigation is completed, likely in the summer of 2013. The
evolution of this story includes the accounts and reports of policemen on the
scene to the overwhelming support for the families of victims and even to the
heated debates on gun control as a result of the attack.
Works Cited
Audi, Tamara,
Ben Kesling and Pervaiz Shallwani. "School Gunman's Downward
Spiral." 22 December 2012. The
Wall Street Journal. 28 February 2013
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324731304578193890
846892734.html>.
Candiotti, Susan and Sarah Aarthun. Police: 20 children
among 26 victims of
Connecticut School Shooting. 15 December
2012. 25 February 2013
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/us/connecticut-school-
shooting/index.html?iref=allsearch>.
"Did the Sandy Hook Shooting Prove the Need for More
Gun Control?" U.S. News. 27
February 2013
<http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/did-the-sandy-hook-
shooting-prove-the-need-for-more-gun-control>.
"Newtown Families Grieve As Medical Examiner Works To
Identify Victims In Sandy
Hook School Shooting." The
Hartford Courant 15 December 2012.
Payne, Ed. Report: Sandy Hook shootertried to emulate
Norway massacre. 19
February 2013. 26 February 2013
<http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/19/justice/connecticut-newtown-
shooting/index.html>.
R.W. Democracy in America. 15 December 2012. 25
February 2013
<http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/12/guns-
america>.
Rosenthal, John. "We Are to Blame for the Sandy Hook
Elementary School
Massacre." 28 December 2012. Huffington
Post. 26 February 2013
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/united-states-gun-
violence_b_2375393.html>.
"School shooting: President Obama’s remarks on the
shooting at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
(Transcript)." 14 December 2012. The
Washington Post. 26 February
2013
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-
14/politics/35846745_1_parent-children-transcript>.
Sullivan, Connie, Kris Feda and Janet Vollmer. Sandy Hook
teacher told students
'they were loved' Matt Lauer.
17 December 2012.
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