Heroes of Newtown: Sandy Hook principal died lunging at gunman, others shielded students with their bodies

Associated Press and Postmedia News | Dec 15, 2012 1:52 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 15, 2012 6:46 PM ET

AFP PHOTO/DON EMMERTDON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images; Twitter Media and residents gather near the entrance to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Saturday in Newtown, Connecticut. The day before, Dawn Hochsprung died along with 20 of her students in a horrific shooting.

Dawn Hochsprung’s pride in Sandy Hook Elementary was clear. She regularly tweeted photos from her time as principal. Just this week, it was an image of students rehearsing for their winter concert.
She viewed her school as a model, telling The Newtown Bee newspaper in 2010 that “I don’t think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day.” She had worked to make Sandy Hook a place of safety, too, and in October, the 47-year-old Hochsprung shared a picture of the school’s evacuation drill with the message “Safety first.”

When the unthinkable came, she was ready to defend. Officials said she died while lunging at the gunman in an attempt to overtake him.

“She had an extremely likable style about her,” said Gerald Stomski, first selectman of Woodbury, where Hochsprung lived and had taught. “She was an extremely charismatic principal while she was here.”

As police release new information on Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in drips and drabs, stories are emerging from the horrific scene inside Sandy Hook Elementary of school workers who laid their lives down to protect the youngsters trapped in the building with a gunman.

Twenty-eight people were killed Friday by gunman Adam Lanza — his mother, Nancy, twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook, and himself. Lanza apparently killed his mother at their home before driving to the school in her car with her guns.

School principal Dawn Hochsprung, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, and first grade teacher Victoria Soto were all among the dead — all apparently died trying to save the students of Sandy Hook.

When Lanza entered the school at about 9:30 a.m. Friday morning, Hochsprung was meeting with Sherlach, school therapist Diane Day and a parent to discuss a second-grader. That’s when the shots rang out.

“We were there for about five minutes chatting, and we heard Pop! Pop!, Pop!” Day told the Wall Street Journal. “I went under the table.”

Hochsprung and Sherlach ran out of the room, toward the shots. “They didn’t think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on,” Day said. Hochsprung lunged at the gunman when she confronted him, officials say. She was killed. Sherlach is also believed to have been killed.
Elsewhere in the school, Sito, 27, ushered her students into a closet for safety after she heard the shots, where she died shielding the youngsters’ bodies from gunfire. “That is how she was found,” Jim Wiltsie, a police officer, told the Journal. “Huddled with her children.”

It’s still unclear why Lanza chose the school for his killing spree. Despite previous accounts, Mary Ann Jacobs, a library clerk at Sandy Hook, said that Lanza’s mother was not employed at the school.
The school had recently put new security precautions in place. Lanza had to force his way in. “He was not voluntarily let into the school at all,” Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said Saturday morning.

“He forced his way into the school. But that’s as far as we can go on that.” There are reports that the killer broke through the locked front door.

Not long after he entered the school, police discovered the grisly scene.

“I’ve got bodies here,” says an officer in a radio recording released by Newtown police. “We have multiple weapons, including one rifle and a shotgun. We need doctors here ASAP.”

Investigators are still trying to learn more about Lanza and questioned his older brother, Ryan, who was not believed to have been involved in the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary.

ABC News   Alleged Sandy Hook Elementary shooter Adam Lanza in a 2005 photo obtained by 

ABC News.

She beams in photos. Her enthusiasm was evident. She was doing, those who knew her say, what she loved.

And now, Victoria Soto is being called a hero.
Though details of the 27-year-old teacher’s death remain fuzzy, her name has been invoked again and again as a portrait of selflessness and humanity among unfathomable evil.

A cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC News that investigators told his family she was killed while shielding her students from danger. She reportedly hid some students in a bathroom or closet, ensuring they were safe.

“She was trying to shield, get her children into a closet and protect them from harm,” Wiltsie told ABC. “And by doing that, put herself between the gunman and the children.”

Soto’s goal was simply to be a teacher.
“She lost her life doing what she loved,” Wiltsie said.

In tight-knit Newtown on Friday night, hundreds of people packed St. Rose of Lima Church and stood outside in a vigil for the 28 dead – 20 children and six adults at the school, the gunman’s mother at home, and the gunman himself, who committed suicide. People held hands, lit candles and sang “Silent Night.”

“These 20 children were just beautiful, beautiful children,” Monsignor Robert Weiss said. “These 20 children lit up this community better than all these Christmas lights we have. … There are a lot brighter stars up there tonight because of these kids.”

Lanza is believed to have suffered from a personality disorder and lived with his mother, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation.

Asked at a news conference whether Lanza had left any emails or other writings that might explain the rampage, state police Lt. Vance said investigators had found “very good evidence” and hoped it would answer questions about the gunman’s motives. He would not elaborate.

The tragedy plunged the picturesque New England town of 27,000 people into mourning.
“People in my neighbourhood are feeling guilty about it being Christmas. They are taking down decorations,” said Jeannie Pasacreta, a psychologist who volunteered her services and was advising parents struggling with how to talk to their children.

Maryann Jacob, a clerk in the school library, was in the school with 18 fourth-graders when they heard a commotion and gunfire outside the room. She had the youngsters crawl into a storage room, and they locked the door and barricaded it with a file cabinet. There happened to be materials for coloring, “so we set them up with paper and crayons.”

Jared Wickerham/Getty ImagesState Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance briefs the media and answers 

 questions about the elementary school shooting in Newtown during a press conference at Treadwell 

Memorial Park on Saturday.

A year ago, 6-year-old Ana Marquez-Greene was reveling in holiday celebrations with her extended family on her first trip to Puerto Rico.

The girl’s grandmother, Elba Marquez, said the child’s family moved to Connecticut just two months ago, drawn from Canada, in part, by Sandy Hook’s pristine reputation. The grandmother’s brother, Jorge Marquez, is mayor of a Puerto Rican town and said the child’s 9-year-old brother was also at the school, but he escaped safely.

Elba Marquez had just visited the new home over the Thanksgiving holiday and finds herself perplexed by what happened.

“It was a beautiful place, just beautiful,” she said. “What happened does not match up with the place where they live.”

After what she guessed was about an hour, officers came to the door and knocked, but those inside couldn’t be sure it was the police.

“One of them slid his badge under the door, and they called and said, `It’s OK, it’s the police,’” she said.

A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to it. It was not clear whether he held a job.

Lanza and his mother lived in a well-to-do part of prosperous Newtown, about 100 km northeast of New York City, where neighbours are doctors or hold white-collar positions at companies such as General Electric, Pepsi and IBM.

His parents filed for divorce in 2008, according to court records. His father, Peter Lanza, lives in Stamford, Conn., and works as a tax director for GE.

The gunman’s aunt Marsha Lanza, of Crystal Lake, Ill., said her nephew was raised by kind, nurturing parents who would not have hesitated to seek mental help for him if he needed it.
“Nancy wasn’t one to deny reality,” Marsha Lanza said, adding her husband had seen Adam as recently as June and recalled nothing out of the ordinary.

Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesPolice officers keep guard at the entrance to the street leading to the Sandy

Hook School on Saturday.

Catherine Urso, of Newtown, said her college-age son knew the killer. “He just said he was very thin, very remote and was one of the goths,” she said.

Lanza attended Newtown High School, and several news clippings from recent years mention his name among the honor roll students.

Joshua Milas, who graduated from Newtown High in 2009 and belonged to the school technology club with him, said that Lanza was generally a happy person but that he hadn’t seen him in a few years.

“We would hang out, and he was a good kid. He was smart,” Joshua Milas said. “He was probably one of the smartest kids I know. He was probably a genius.”

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer   Volunteer firefighters place flowers at a makeshift memorial at a sign for the 

Sandy Hook Elementary school Saturday.

When the shots rang out, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, threw herself into the danger.
Janet Robinson, the superintendent of Newtown Public Schools, said Sherlach and the school’s principal ran toward the shooter. They lost their lives, rushing toward him.

Even as Sherlach neared retirement, her job at Sandy Hook was one she loved. Those who knew her called her a wonderful neighbour, a beautiful person, a dedicated educator.

Her son-in-law, Eric Schwartz, told the South Jersey Times that Sherlach relished helping children overcome their problems. She had planned to leave work early on Friday, he said. In a news conference Saturday, he told reporters the loss was devastating, but that Sherlach was doing what she loved.

“Mary felt like she was doing God’s work,” he said, “working with the children.”

The mass shooting is one of the deadliest in U.S. history, and among school attacks is second in victims only to the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 people dead, including the gunman. Reaction was swift and emotional in Newtown and beyond.

“It has to stop, these senseless deaths,” said Frank DeAngelis, principal of Colorado’s Columbine High School, where a massacre in 1999 killed 15 people.

In Washington, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence organized a vigil at the White House, with some protesters chanting, “Today IS the day” to take steps to curb gun violence. In New York’s Times Square, a few dozen people held tea lights in plastic cups, with one woman holding a sign that read: “Take a moment and candle to remember the victims of the Newtown shooting.”

President Barack 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 at a White House news briefing. He paused for several seconds to keep his composure as he teared up and wiped an eye. Nearby, two aides cried and held hands.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard described the attack as a “senseless and incomprehensible act of evil.”

“Like President Obama and his fellow Americans, our hearts too are broken,” Gillard said in a statement.

In Japan, where guns are severely restricted and there are extremely few gun-related crimes, the attack led the news two days before parliamentary elections. In China, which has seen several knife rampages at schools in recent years, the attack quickly consumed public discussion.

Lauren Rousseau had spent years working as a substitute teacher and doing other jobs. So she was thrilled when she finally realized her goal this year to become a full-time teacher at Sandy Hook.
“It was the best year of her life,” her mother, Teresa Rousseau, told the Danbury News-Times, where she is a copy editor.

Rousseau has been called gentle, spirited and active. She was a lover of music, dance and theatre.
“I’m used to having people die who are older,” her mother said, “not the person whose room is up over the kitchen.”

In Newtown, 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.

Kaitlin Roig, a teacher at the school, said she implored her students to be quiet.

“I told them we had to be absolutely quiet. Because I was just so afraid if he did come in, then he would hear us and just start shooting the door. I said we have to be absolutely quiet. And I said there are bad guys out there now and we need to wait for the good guys to come get us out,” Roig told ABC.

“If they started crying, I would take their face and say, `It’s going to be OK. Show me your smile,’” she said. “They said, `We want to go home for Christmas. Yes, yeah. I just want to hug my mom.’ Things like that, that were just heartbreaking.”

Related

• ‘Brilliant but remote’: Police still hunting for motive that drove ‘goth’ gunman to kill 27
• 'I've got bodies here': Hear the moment police realize there's been a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School
• Lanza a former honour roll student described as ‘a good kid,’ but also ‘very remote’
• Graphic: A timeline of events during the school shooting

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images    Barack Obama wipes his eye as he speaks following the shooting at a Newtown Elementary School, which left at least 27 people dead.

Names and ages of the Newton shooting victims:
Charlotte Bacon, 6
Daniel Barden, 7
Rachel Davino, 29
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
Dylan Hockley, 6
Dawn Hochsprung, 47
Madeleine Hsu, 6
Catherine Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Emilie Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Lauren Rousseau, 30
Mary Sherlach, 56
Victoria Soto,27
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison Wyatt, 6
Source: Connecticut State Police