Man kills 26 at Conn. school, including 20 kids

JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN,Associated Press

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A man opened fire Fri­day inside the Con­necti­cut ele­men­tary school where his mother worked as a teacher, killing 26 peo­ple, includ­ing 20 chil­dren, as young­sters cow­ered in their class­rooms and trem­bled help­lessly to the sound of gun­fire rever­ber­at­ing through the building.

The killer, armed with two hand­guns, com­mit­ted sui­cide and another per­son was found dead at a sec­ond scene, bring­ing the toll to 28, author­i­ties said.

The attack, com­ing less than two weeks before Christ­mas, was the nation’s second-deadliest school shoot­ing, exceeded only by the Vir­ginia Tech mas­sacre that left 33 peo­ple dead in 2007.

Pan­icked par­ents raced to Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School, about 60 miles north­east of New York City, look­ing for their chil­dren. Stu­dents were told to close their eyes by police as they were led from the building.

School­child­ren — some cry­ing, oth­ers look­ing fright­ened — were escorted through a park­ing lot in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders.

“Our hearts are bro­ken today,” a tear­ful Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, strug­gling to main­tain com­po­sure, said at the White House. He called for “mean­ing­ful action” to pre­vent such shootings.

Young­sters and their par­ents described teach­ers lock­ing doors and order­ing the chil­dren to hud­dle in the cor­ner or hide in clos­ets when shots echoed through the build­ing. The shoot­ings took place in two rooms, but they gave no details on exactly how they unfolded.

A law enforce­ment offi­cial iden­ti­fied the gun­man as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the son of a teacher. A sec­ond law enforce­ment offi­cial said his mother, Nancy Lanza, was pre­sumed dead.

Adam Lanza’s older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hobo­ken, N.J., was being ques­tioned, the first offi­cial said. Ear­lier, a law enforce­ment offi­cial mis­tak­enly iden­ti­fied Ryan as the shooter.

Both offi­cials spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak on the record about the unfold­ing investigation.

The gun­man drove to the school in his mother’s car, the sec­ond offi­cial said. Three guns were found — a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pis­tols, inside the school, and a .223-caliber rifle in the back of a car.

Lanza’s girl­friend and another friend were miss­ing in New Jer­sey, the offi­cial also said.

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.

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.

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.

Mary Pen­der­gast, who lives close to the school, said her 9-year-old nephew was in the school at the time of the shoot­ing, but wasn’t hurt after his music teacher helped him take cover in a closet.

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.”

On Fri­day after­noon, fam­ily mem­bers were led away from a fire­house that was being used as a stag­ing area, some of them weep­ing. One man, wear­ing only a T-shirt with­out a jacket, put his arms around a woman as they walked down the mid­dle of the street, obliv­i­ous to every­thing around them.

Another woman with tears rolling down her face walked by car­ry­ing a car seat with a young infant inside and a bag that appeared to have toys and stuffed animals.

The shoot­ings instantly brought to mind episodes such as the Columbine High School mas­sacre that killed 15 in 1999 and the July shoot­ings at a movie the­ater in Aurora, Colo., that left 12 dead.

“You go to a movie the­ater in Aurora and all of a sud­den your life is taken,” Columbine prin­ci­pal Frank DeAn­ge­lis said. “You’re at a shop­ping mall in Port­land, Ore., and your life is taken. This morn­ing, when par­ents kissed their kids good­bye know­ing that they are going to be home to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day sea­son com­ing up, you don’t expect this to hap­pen. I think as a soci­ety, we need to come together. It has to stop, these sense­less deaths.”

Obama’s com­ments on the tragedy amounted to one of the most out­wardly emo­tional moments of his presidency.

“The major­ity of those who died were chil­dren — beau­ti­ful, lit­tle kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said.

He paused for sev­eral sec­onds to keep his com­po­sure as he teared up and wiped an eye. Nearby, two aides cried and held hands as they lis­tened to Obama.

“They had their entire lives ahead of them — birth­days, grad­u­a­tions, wed­ding, kids of their own,” Obama con­tin­ued about the vic­tims. “Among the fallen were also teach­ers, men and women who devoted their lives to help­ing our children.”

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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.