At least 27 people have been murdered at close range on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 by a crazed lone gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a bedroom community just about an hour from both the capital city of Hartford in the north and New York City to the south. Twenty of the gunshot victims were elementary school children, the news media is reporting. Another person has been discovered murdered at one of the homes of the shooter.
The alleged mass murderer has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza. According to reports, Lanza killed his mother at their home before bursting into the school and killing elementary school kids, ages 5 to 10, with the three handguns that have since been retrieved by authorities. The beloved school principal and staff psychologist were among the slain adults.
After Lanza finished his blood-curdling massacre, he committed suicide, authorities tell the media. His body has been temporarily stored in one of the rooms of the school. Agents from both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have been dispatched to help local officials with the investigation and find the cause of one of the worst mass elementary school shootings in U.S. history.
This crystallizes the growing problem of mass school shootings. Incredibly, ABC’s Diane Sawyer reported, there have been 31 school shooting rampages since the mass murder-suicide at Columbine High School in suburban Denver in 1999. And this unimaginable, evil tragedy comes just days after a mass mall shooting just outside of Portland, Ore.
According to the local NBC affiliate in Connecticut, authorities responded to the sounds of rapid-fire shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at about 9:30 a.m. Friday morning, according to the Hartford Courant.
