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Newtown shootings of 2012, also called Sandy Hook School
shooting, mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14,
2012, that left 28 people dead and 2 injured. In addition to the
shooter, 18 children and 6 adults died at Sandy Hook School and
2 children died at a nearby hospital, making it one of the
deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

The attack began when 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother,
Nancy Lanza, in the home that the two shared in Newtown. She was
shot four times with a .22-calibre rifle. She had purchased the
rifle, as well as an AR-15—the civilian semiautomatic version of
the military M16 assault rifle—and several other firearms that
Adam Lanza would use later that day, in the years prior to the
shooting. Before leaving the house, Lanza destroyed his
computer’s hard drive, an act that would make evidence gathering
difficult for law-enforcement personnel.

The Shootings At Sandy Hook School
Adam Lanza gathered the AR-15, two semiautomatic pistols, and a
shotgun, as well as several hundred rounds of ammunition, and
drove his mother’s car to Sandy Hook School, a public elementary
school in Newtown for kindergarten through fourth grade. Leaving
the shotgun in the car, Lanza shot his way through a window next
to the school’s locked security door just after 9:30 AM. He was
immediately confronted by Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung
and school psychologist Mary Sherlach. Lanza shot and killed
both women, but the encounter and the sounds of gunfire were
broadcast to individual classrooms via the school’s public-
address system. In accordance with previously established
lockdown protocols, teachers immediately took steps to attempt
to safeguard their students, concealing them in closets or
bathrooms and barricading doors with furniture or with their own
bodies.

Lanza entered the classroom of teacher Lauren Rousseau and
killed her and 14 children. He then went to a second classroom,
where first-grade teacher Victoria Soto had hidden her students
in a closet. She attempted to misdirect Lanza by telling him
that her class was in the school’s auditorium on the other side
of the building. Lanza killed Soto, as well as six students who
attempted to flee from their hiding place. Also killed in the
shooting were Anne Marie Murphy, a special education aide, and
behavioral therapist Rachel D’Avino; two other Sandy Hook staff
members were injured.

The first emergency call from the school was received at about
9:35 AM, and law-enforcement personnel responded within minutes.
The first officers to enter the building caught a glimpse of an
individual dressed in dark clothing, and, after hearing a series
of shots, they found Lanza near the door to Soto’s classroom,
dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As the scale of the
attack became clear, dozens of state and local police officers
descended on the school, which police officials said would
remain closed as a crime scene “indefinitely.” Investigators
determined that Lanza had used the AR-15 as his primary weapon
throughout the attack, though he had taken his own life with a
handgun.

The Aftermath
In the days following the shootings, medical examinations of the
victims revealed that each had been shot multiple times. While
police attempted to uncover a motive for the attack, the scale
of the massacre, compounded by the age of the victims—the
majority of whom were six or seven years old—sparked a renewed
debate about Second Amendment rights. Proponents of gun control
focused particular attention on the AR-15 that Lanza had used,
as well as the 30-round ammunition magazines he had carried.
Some semiautomatic assault rifles and large-capacity magazines
had been banned under legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in
1994, but that law was allowed to lapse in 2004. Legislators
pledged to reintroduce it in the wake of the Newtown shootings,
and Pres. Barack Obama stated that he would use all the powers
of his office to prevent future mass shootings. The National
Rifle Association responded by advocating the introduction of
armed guards into all American schools. More than one-fifth of
public and private schools in the U.S. already employed police
or other armed security personnel.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Newtown-shootings-of-2012
 

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