Via NBC:
Twenty-six people were killed, including 18 children, when a gunman opened fire in a Connecticut elementary school Friday morning, a law enforcement official said.
The gunman, who is dead, was a 20-year-old from Connecticut, an official said. He was wearing all black and was carrying two 9mm handguns.
The incident — the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history after Virginia Tech in 2007 — sent crying children spilling into the school parking lot as frightened parents waited for word on their loved ones.
“I was in the gym and I heard a loud, like seven loud booms, and the gym teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled,” one student at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown told NBC Connecticut during its live broadcast. “And I kept hearing these booming noises. And we all … started crying.
“All the gym teachers told us to go into the office where no one could find us,” she added. “So then a police officer came in and told us to run outside. So we did and we came in the firehouse and waited for our parents.”
Two 9mm handguns were recovered from the scene, an official told WNBC’s Jonathan Dienst.
Three people were taken to nearby Danbury Hospital, a spokeswoman told NBC Connecticut. She would not elaborate on the ages of the victims or their conditions.
One of those taken to the hospital was a teacher who had been shot in the foot, the Associated Press reported, citing a dispatcher at the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps.
The Newtown Bee reported that one child, apparently wounded, was carried from the scene by a police officer.
I hope that the first NRA defender who says that this could have been prevented if the kids and teachers at the school were armed rots for eternity in the lowest circle of Hell, even if I don’t believe there is such a place.
I have been crying on and off for most of the afternoon. I can’t imagine what you are going through since you work at a school. I’ve been thinking how I would feel if it had happened at Caleb’s school. And then I cry all the more. Even now, as I type this in the Hastings Dunn Bros. Coffe Shop, I’m tearing up. I’ve flashes of anger, but hold it off. Instead I am allowing grief its release and am grateful to be able to spend this Friday evening with my son.
It seems that a bill to arm teachers and janitors in schools has just been presented to the Michigan legislature in order to forestall mass shootings in schools. Can you believe it? Gov.Rick Snyder is “considering it”. It’s simply beyond my understanding how there can be those who simply don’t get it. The shooter in this case as well as in several others wore masks,flak jackets and bullet-proof vests. They acted like paramilitary and this made or would make it extremely difficult to stop them even if you’re a cop. Moreover all these evil-doers shoot THEMSELVES in the end so they figure they have nothing to lose. How simple-minded can you be to write up a bill to arm teachers? Nearly as stupid as Mike Huckabee who blames the lack of god in schools for the violence.
I’d like to see Wayne LaPierre be forced to listen to the parents of those children. And Bryan Fischer has already blamed this on the lack of God in schools.
It’s going to be one helluva Christmas for a lot of people…
Julie, Mr. LaPierre should have to go to the funerals. Every single one of them. Maybe then he would think about this in a different way.
Good point! Attending 27-28 funerals, including that of the shooter, should be a wake-up call.
I don’t see a lot of school shootings in European countries that are at least as secular as the US. One big difference? Guns!