He said their wounds were “all over, all over.”
“This is a very devastating set of injuries,” he said at a briefing in
Newtown. When he was asked if they had suffered after they were hit, he
said, “Not for very long.”
The disclosures came as the police released the victims’ names. They ranged in age from 6 to 56.
The children — 12 girls and 8 boys — were all first-graders. One little
girl had just turned 7 on Tuesday. All of the adults were women.
The White House announced that President Obama would visit Newtown on
Sunday evening to meet with victims’ families and speak at an interfaith
vigil.
On Saturday, as families began to claim the bodies of lost loved ones,
some sought privacy. Others spoke out. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old
daughter, Emilie, was among the dead, choked back tears as he described
her as “bright, creative and very loving.”
But, he added, “as we move on from what happened here, what happened to
so many people, let us not let it turn into something that defines us.”
On a day of anguish and mourning, other details emerged about how, but
not why, the devastating attack had happened, turning a place where
children were supposed to be safe into a national symbol of heartbreak
and horror.
The Newtown school superintendent said the principal and the school
psychologist had been shot as they tried to tackle the gunman in order
to protect their students.
That was just one act of bravery during the maelstrom. There were
others, said the superintendent, Janet Robinson. She said one teacher
had helped children escape through a window. Another shoved students
into a room with a kiln and held them there until the danger had passed.
It was not enough: First responders described a scene of carnage in the
two classrooms where the children were killed, with no movement and no
one left to save, everything perfectly still.
The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, had grown up in Newtown and
had an uncle who had been a police officer in New Hampshire. The uncle,
James M. Champion, issued a statement expressing “heartfelt sorrow,”
adding that the family was struggling “to comprehend the tremendous loss
we all share.”
A spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, Lt. J. Paul Vance, said
investigators continued to press for information about Mr. Lanza, and
had collected “some very good evidence.” He also said that the one
survivor of the killings, a woman who was shot and wounded at the
school, would be “instrumental” in piecing together what had happened.
But it was unclear why Mr. Lanza had gone on the attack. A law
enforcement official said investigators had not found a suicide note or
messages that spoke to the planning of such a deadly attack. And Ms.
Robinson, the school superintendent, said they had found no connection
between Mr. Lanza’s mother and the school, in contrast to accounts from
authorities on Friday that said she had worked there.
Dr. Carver said it appeared that all of the children had been killed by a
“long rifle” that Mr. Lanza was carrying; a .223 Bushmaster
semiautomatic rifle was one of the several weapons police found in the
school. The other guns were semiautomatic pistols, including a
10-millimeter Glock and a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer.
The bullets Mr. Lanza used were “designed in such a fashion the energy
is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in,” resulting in deep
damage, Dr. Carver said. As to how many bullets Mr. Lanza had fired, Dr.
Carver said he did not have an exact count. “There were lots of them,”
he said.
NBC News
Emilie Parker Fund, via Associated Press
David Goldman/Associated Press
He said that parents had identified their children from photographs to
spare them from seeing the gruesome results of the rampage. He said that
4 doctors and 10 technicians had done the autopsies and that he had
personally performed seven, all on first-graders.
“This is probably the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any
of my colleagues having seen,” said Dr. Carver, who is 60 and has been
Connecticut’s chief medical examiner since 1989.
He said that only Mr. Lanza and his first victim — his mother, Nancy
Lanza — remained to be autopsied. He said he would do those post-mortems
on Sunday.
Officials said the killing spree began early on Friday at the house
where the Lanzas lived. There, Mr. Lanza shot his mother in the face,
making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, after taking
three guns that belonged to her, they said, he climbed into her car for
the short drive to the school.
Outfitted in combat gear, Mr. Lanza shot his way in, defeating a
security system requiring visitors to be buzzed in. This contradicted
earlier reports that he had been recognized and allowed to enter the
one-story building. “He was not voluntarily let into the school at all,”
Lieutenant Vance said. “He forced his way in.”
The lieutenant’s account was consistent with recordings of police
dispatchers who answered call after call from adults at the school. “The
front glass has been broken,” one dispatcher cautioned officers who
were rushing there, repeating on the police radio what a 911 caller had
said on the phone. “They are unsure why.”
The dispatchers kept up a running account of the drama at the school.
“The individual I have on the phone indicates continuing to hear what he
believes to be gunfire,” one dispatcher said.
Soon, another dispatcher reported that the “shooting appears to have
stopped,” and the conversation on the official radios turned to making
sure that help was available — enough help.
“What is the number of ambulances you will require?” a dispatcher asked.
The answer hinted at the unthinkable scope of the tragedy: “They are not giving us a number.”
Another radio transmission, apparently from someone at the school,
underlined the desperation: “You might want to see if the surrounding
towns can send E.M.S. personnel. We’re running out real quick, real
fast.”
Inside the school, teachers and school staff members had scrambled to
move children to safety as the massacre began. Maryann Jacob, a library
clerk, said she initially herded students behind a bookcase against a
wall “where they can’t be seen.” She said that spot had been chosen in
practice drills for school lockdowns, but on Friday, she had to move the
pupils to a storage room “because we discovered one of our doors didn’t
lock.”
Ms. Jacob said the storage room had crayons and paper that they tore up
for the children to color while they waited. “They were asking what was
going on,” she said. “We said: ‘We don’t know. Our job is just to be
quiet.’ ” But she said that she did know, because she had called the
school office and learned that the school was under siege.
It was eerily silent in the school when police officers rushed in with
their rifles drawn. There were the dead or dying in one section of the
building, while elsewhere, those who had eluded the bullets were under
orders from their teachers to remain quiet in their hiding places.
The officers discovered still more carnage: After gunning down the
children and the school employees, the authorities said, Mr. Lanza had
killed himself.
The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and the psychologist, Mary Sherlach,
56, were among the dead, as were the teachers Rachel Davino, 29; Anne
Marie Murphy, 52; and Victoria Soto, 27. Lauren Rousseau, 30, had
started as a full-time teacher in September after years of working as a
substitute. “It was the best year of her life,” The News-Times quoted her mother, Teresa, a copy editor at the newspaper, as saying.
Ms. Soto reportedly shooed her first graders into closets and cabinets
when she heard the first shots, and then, by some accounts, told the
gunman the youngsters were in the gym. Her cousin, James Willsie, told ABC News that she had “put herself between the gunman and the kids.”
“She lost her life protecting those little ones,” he said.
School officials have said there are no immediate plans to reopen Sandy
Hook Elementary. Staff members will gather at the high school on Monday
to discuss what happened, and students will be assigned to attend other
schools by Wednesday.
Dorothy Werden, 49, lives across the street from Christopher and Lynn
McDonnell, who lost their daughter Grace, 7, in the rampage. Ms. Werden
remembered seeing Grace get on a bus Friday, as she did every morning at
8:45. Shortly afterward, she received a call that there had been a
lockdown at the school — something that happens periodically, she said,
because there is a prison nearby. It was only when she saw police cars
from out of town speed past her that she knew something was seriously
wrong.
Like the rest of the nation, she said, local residents were struggling with a single question: Why?
“Why did he have to go to the elementary school and kill all of those defenseless children?” Ms. Werden asked.