Five years ago, mass murderer Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School where he shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Connecticut. Today, we pay tribute to the victims of the tragedy by remembering those who were lost through photos that are both heart-breaking and heart-warming.
On December 14, 2017, Adam Lanza committed the fourth-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history.
Twenty little children and six female staffers became angels as a result of the Sandy Hook massacre. Lanza gunned down children between the ages of six and seven years old. He gunned down staffers between 27 and 52 years old.
The horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting lives on to this day. But through the terror, heroes emerged. Principal Dawn Hochsprung, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, and lead teacher Natalie Hammond sought out the sound of gunfire and found the shooter. All three women called out, “Shooter! Stay put!” which alerted her colleagues and most likely saved lives. Both Hochsprung and Sherlach lost their lives as a result of the tragedy. However, Hammond was able to survive despite getting shot twice by Lanza.
Before the Sandy Hook Shooting, Lanza had shot and killed his mother Nancy at their home in Newtown, Connecticut. He then took her Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and went on the deadliest mass shooting at a grade school in U.S. history.
After five minutes of intense shooting, the gunman turned his weapon on himself. Police report hearing the final gunshot at 9:40:03 A.M. It’s not officially known why he carried out the mass shooting, but a report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that “his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems… combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence… (and) access to deadly weapons… proved a recipe for mass murder”.
What were the names of the victims?
Here’s a list of those who died in the Sandy Hook Massacre…
- Charlotte Bacon, 6
- Daniel Barden, 7
- Olivia Engel, 6
- Josephine Gay, 7
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6
- Dylan Hockley, 6
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 6
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6
- Chase Kowalski, 7
- Jesse Lewis, 6
- James Mattioli, 6
- Grace McDonnell, 7
- Emilie Parker, 6
- Jack Pinto, 6
- Noah Pozner, 6
- Caroline Previdi, 6
- Jessica Rekos, 6
- Avielle Richman, 6
- Benjamin Wheeler, 6
- Allison N. Wyatt, 6
- Mary Sherlach, 56
- Victoria Soto, 27
- Anne Marie Murphy, 52
- Lauren Rousseau, 30
- Dawn Hochsprung, 47
- Rachel Davino, 29
