Newtown School Shooting

Updates on the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting

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Petition started to rename Stratford street in Vicki Soto’s honor

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A Stratford resident has started a petition to try and get the town of Stratford to change the name of one of its streets to honor Vicki Soto, the 27-year-old heroic teacher killed last Friday in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Chris Barbee said on the petition website Change.org that North Parade Street, which runs in front of Soto’s Alma Mater, Stratford High School, to Victoria Soto Way, to “ensure her actions will never be forgotten.”

Melissa Perez, of Wallingford, said her reason for signing is because, “She is an angel who gave her life…”

According to reports, Soto hid as many of her students as possible in closets and other places in her classroom, and tried to get between her kids and the shooter.

The petition is directed to the Stratford Town Council. As of 9 p.m., 639 people had signed the petition.

Click here to sign the petition.

Feds raid East Windsor shop where Nancy Lanza bought gun

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An East Windsor gun store where one of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was purchased was raided by federal agents Thursday night, according to WFSB.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, had two pistols and an AR-15 Bushmaster rifle when he entered the Newtown school last Friday. Lanza’s mother, Nancy, had legally purchased all three guns. Lanza killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. He shot his mother in the Newtown home they shared before going to the school.

WFSB said the gun store, Riverview Gun Sales, is also where police said a man stole an assault weapon and planned to carry out an attack similar to the Sandy Hook shooting. Jordan March, 26, of South Windsor, can be seen on video stealing an AR-15 with a scope , a day after the shooting, according to WFSB.

Marsh was caught Saturday trying to steal a 50-caliber long gun from the same store, one day after the Newtown shooting, WFSB reported. The AR-15 was found in a duffel bag in a room at the Hartford Hilton.

Police told WFSB that Marsh allegedly stole 11 guns from the store, and the business was not aware of it until notified by detectives. The news station said there have been inventory issues at the gun store before, including in 2007 when police found more than 30 guns were missing from that store.

The store’s owner told WFSB that he is saddened a gun used in the massacre was bought at his store.

Newtown police chief issues statement on shooting

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The Newtown Police Department wishes to express its deepest sympathies to the families of those lost in the senseless tragedy that visited Sandy Hook Elementary School and to the entire Town of Newtown on Friday, December 14, 2012.

First, let me offer my praise to our teachers and school staff. They became first responders to unimaginable chaos and violence. Their actions under fire to protect the children inspire us all. Equally inspiring was the courage of our children in helping their classmates.
Our police, fire, and emergency medical personnel reacted quickly and without hesitation, rapidly responding to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Their professionalism was heartwarming to witness; our community is proud of them.

I appreciate the many area police departments and the Connecticut State Police, who have provide immediate assistance in our time of need. The unconditional support of the law enforcement community as we investigate and recover has been overwhelming.

Processing multiple crime scenes in Newtown, conducting countless interviews, and analyzing all of the evidence is very daunting and time-consuming task. Newtown Police Officers are working with state and federal authorities to thoroughly and professionally analyze all aspects of this crime as we seek answers.

I would like to reassure the people of Newtown that our schools are safe. The staff of Sandy Hook Elementary School had taken all reasonable precautions to provide a safe learning environment to the faculty and students of the school. Those precautions clearly saved lives.

I thank the community for its support of the Newtown Police Department. We much appreciate the outpouring of food, gifts, and expressions of support to our agency.

The Newtown Police Department will work with our community partners to restore a sense of security and normalcy to Newtown. Our law enforcement professionals are committed to helping the community through this difficult period. It is my honor to be associated with such fine people.

Chief Michael K. Kehoe

Nancy Lanza buried

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A family friend of Nancy Lanza, the mother of shooter Adam Lanza, said she was buried at an undisclosed location Thursday, according to CNN.

The Associated Press said Nancy Lanza was buried in her native state of New Hampshire, but the exact location wasn’t released. A small, private funeral was held.

Donald Briggs grew up with Nancy Lanza in Kingston, New Hampshire. The State Medical Examiner in Connecticut said Thursday that Lanza’s body was picked up by an out-of-state funeral home.

Briggs told CNN that plans haven’t been finalized for the burial of Adam Lanza.

“That’s still under discussion,” Briggs said. “If anything, it would be in the spring.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visits Newtown

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The U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Newtown on Wednesday, meeting privately with teachers and school district staff.

Duncan also attended services for Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung, one of 26 victims of Friday’s mass shooting at the school. He met with Hochsprung’s daughters earlier in the day.

Duncan also posted a video on the U.S. Department of Education website, thanking the educators at Sandy Hook school, and addressing teachers and staff members around the nation.

“I want to take a moment to thank the many extraordinary educators school leaders and school principals who protected the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” said Duncan in the video. “Words cannot do justice to the courage of Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach, Lauren Rousseau, Victoria Soto, Anne Marie Murphy and Rachel D’Avino. They made the ultimate sacrifice, literally laying down their lives to protect the children they taught and cared for.”

He added, “I am extraordinarily grateful to our nation’s teachers, school staff members, principals, and district leaders for the courage and caring they showed in the first few days back to school after the shootings. It is you who have done the hard work of caring for students. It is you who have fostered a sense of normalcy and safety, and let students express their concerns and emotions and fears.”

Newtown superintendent: ‘They don’t want to walk back into that building’

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“We are all in pain,” said Newtown Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson Wednesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show.

“We lost some wonderful people,” Robinson said. “We will never not be affected.”

Robinson said the school district is not sure yet what will happen to Sandy Hook Elementary School, the scene of the horrific shooting where 20 students and 6 school staffers died. The State Police are continuing to hold the building as a crime scene for an investigation that could take months.

Students will be heading back to school after Christmas break, sometime after January 1. They will be at Chalk Hill School in Monroe.

“At this point, the teachers are telling me, and the parents are telling me, they don’t want to walk back into that building,” Robinson said.

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State police report on Newtown shooting ‘months away’

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The Connecticut State Police report on the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School is “several months away,” according to spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance.

The shooting remains under investigation by State Police, assisted by Newtown police and other law enforcement agencies, Vance said in a news release.

“There is no further information to be released by the Connecticut State Police at this time,” Vance said.

Police are continuing to hold the Sandy Hook Elementary School and the home shared by shooter Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, Nancy, who was killed by Adam prior to the shooting spree. Adam Lanza took his own life with a gunshot to the head inside the school after killing 26 people, including 20 children on Friday.

Last class photo shows smiling faces at Sandy Hook

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The last class photo  of Sandy Hook Elementary School students killed in Friday’s mass shooting in Newtown was shown on ABC’s Katie Couric show Tuesday morning.

The smiling, carefree and now familiar faces of the victims leap out of the photo. It is not clear when the photo was taken.

Fourteen of the 15 students in the picture were killed Friday morning in their first-grade classroom. Their substitute teacher, Lauren Rousseau, was also killed. She was substituting for their usual teacher, who was on maternity leave.

One girl, in the center of the photo, hasn’t been identified, but she is alive. A teacher, who is also not identified, is in the picture as well. According to a previous ABC News report, one student survived by playing dead, emerging, bloodied, from the school, telling her parents, she was OK, but “all my friends are dead.”

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The father of another victim, Emilie Parker,  said his daughter was home sick when the photo was taken, but was in that class according to the Daily Mail.

A total of 20 students and six school staff members were killed during the shooting at the school. The gunman killed himself after the massacre, and previously shot his mother while she slept in the Newtown home they shared.

Four students from a second first-grade classroom were also killed. There were four first-grade classrooms at the school.

The children in the photo, top row from left: Catherine Hubbard, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Josephine Gay; Middle row from left: Noah Pozner, Jack Pinto, unidentified, Chase Kowalski, Madeleine Hsu; Bottom row, from left: Jessica Rekos, Daniel Barden, Charlotte Bacon, Benjamin Wheeler and Caroline Previdi.

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