Police: 20 children among 26 victims of Connecticut school shooting

Dressed in black fatigues and a military vest, a heavily armed man walked into a Connecticut elementary school Friday and opened fire, shattering the quiet of this southern New England town and leaving the nation reeling at the number of young lives lost.

Within minutes, 26 people were dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School — 20 of them children. Among the six adults killed were Dawn Hochsprung, the school’s beloved principal, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach,according to CNN.

The shooter, identified by three law enforcement officials as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, also was killed, apparently by his own hand. Separately, his mother’s body was found at a Newtown residence.

“Stuff like this does not happen in Newtown,” a tight-knit community of about 27,000 just outside Danbury, said Renee Burn, a local teacher at another school in town. In the past 10 years, only one homicide had previously been reported.

With the death toll at 26, the Newtown shooting is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind only the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead.

“Evil visited this community today,” Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said of Friday’s massacre.

Young students described being ushered into bathrooms and closets by teachers as the first shots rang out. Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher, locked her classroom doors, covered the windows and read a story to her 19 students to keep them calm.

Third-grader Alexis Wasik said police and teachers barged into her classroom and told students to hide in the corner.

“Everybody was crying,” she said. “And I just heard the police officers yelling.”

One parent who was in the school at the time of the shooting said she heard a “pop, pop, pop,” sound around 9:30 a.m. In the room with her were Hochsprung, the vice principal and Sherlach. All three left the room and went into the hall to see what was happening. The parent ducked under the table and called 911.

“I cowered,” she told CNN’s Meredith Artley. The shooter “must have shot a hundred rounds.”

Responding police officers helped evacuate the children, telling them to hold hands and keep their eyes closed to the carnage as they exited the building.

As reports of the shooting surfaced, frantic parents descended on a nearby firehouse where the children had been taken.

“Why? Why?” one woman wailed as she walked up a wooded roadway leading from the school.

‘It doesn’t seem possible’

Police declined to speculate on a motive Friday evening, citing the ongoing investigation. Lanza had no known criminal record, a law enforcement official said.

The bodies of the young victims remained where they fell Friday night, as authorities worked to positively identify them.

Flags were ordered to fly at half-staff nationwide in tribute to the victims, and candlelight vigils were planned across the country as Americans came together to try to comprehend the tragedy.

Parents, meanwhile, struggled to come up with answers for their children who were among those safely evacuated Friday.

Hochsprung, the slain principal, had recently installed a new security system to ensure student safety.

R.S