Newtown: An American Tragedy (19 page)

A couple of hours after the last child had left his house, a knock came on Gene Rosen’s door. It was Scarlett. She explained that she was looking for her little boy Jesse.

“I heard there were six children here.” The pretty woman’s face looked frozen in terror, almost distorted, as she spoke. “Is Jesse Lewis here?”

Rosen looked at the pained woman, knowing he could provide no words of comfort. “No he’s not, but let’s go to the firehouse,” he told her, knowing that she had already been there. Rosen accompanied her on the short walk back to where the grieving families continued to frantically pace.

B
y 1
P.M.
nearly four hours had passed since Adam Lanza had set foot inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mood in the firehouse had changed. Gone were the joyous parent-child reunions. The room was filled with only twenty-eight families waiting to hear news of their missing loved ones.

Krista Halstead was convinced that her school secretary mother, Barbara, was dead.

“There is nobody left alive inside,” an officer told Krista. “We have checked every nook and cranny.”

But unbeknownst to the family or law enforcement, Barbara and school nurse Sally Cox were still hiding in the first-aid closet.
Shortly after 11:15
A.M.
, almost two hours after the shooting, they decided to open the door a crack. From the slit in their office window they could see several men in the courtyard wearing fatigues and toting weapons, but not knowing whether they were SWAT team members or the attackers they decided to remain hidden. Meanwhile, only feet away in the Principal’s office, law enforcement officials had set up their command center.

Neither had cell phones with them but they could hear helicopters overhead and people on the roof of the school shouting and yelling. At one point, someone jiggled the office door, but did not call out.

Finally, at 1:15
P.M.
, the two women summoned the courage to open the office door. They saw the police, who acted surprised before immediately taking them to safety.

“Close your eyes,” the police said as they escorted Barbara and Sally outside.

They reunited with their families. It would be the last moment of joy that day.

I
n the back room of the old brick firehouse, twenty-six families were asked to sit down. Connecticut governor Dan Malloy walked into the room, standing at his side were local politicians and community leaders, including Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra and St. Rose of Lima pastor Robert Weiss. There was no protocol for a situation like this. The traditional routine of having relatives identify a body before confirming death would leave the families
waiting for several more hours. The governor made the decision that they had already waited long enough.

He whispered to one of his staffers, “I am not going to take any questions from families of the dead kids.” Then he began to address the room of anxious parents in a monotone voice: “Two children were brought to Danbury Hospital and expired.”

Most in the room had feared the worst but hearing the news sent many into hysterics. Many fell off their chairs and onto the floor. Several parents screamed out in agony. One man yelled out: “Well, where did the other people go? We want to be with our kids.”

The governor took a deep breath. “Nobody else was taken to a hospital,” he responded.

“So, what are you telling us, they’re all dead?” another parent screamed.

“Yes.”

The room was in shock. The wails of pain pushed through the walls and out into the parking lot where those within earshot stopped what they were doing and lowered their heads.

Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra ordered that each family be assigned a police escort as a shield against the media and to work as a liaison to help convey information and answer any questions or concerns.

Some of the parents remained at the firehouse. A few huddled around a television at 3:15
P.M.
to watch as President Barack Obama teared up while delivering his statement expressing his shock, grief, and prayers to the victims.

We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. Each time I learn the news I react not as a president but as anybody else would as a parent.

That was especially true today.

I know there’s not a parent in America that doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.

The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.

Among the fallen were also teachers—men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these children and the families of the adults we lost.

Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.

As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago—these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

This evening Michelle and I will do what every parent in America will do—hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them. There are families in Connecticut that cannot do that tonight and they need all of us tonight.

May God bless the memory of the victims and in the words of Scripture heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.

Governor Dan Malloy left the firehouse to address the media gathered nearby at Treadwell Memorial Park: “Evil visited this community today. And it’s too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut—we’re all in this together. We’ll do whatever we can to overcome this event. We will get through it.”

I
nside the firehouse, Jenny Hubbard had been sitting with Pastor Robert Weiss for several hours waiting for news about her six-year-old daughter, Catherine. Her child was “unaccounted for,” she was told. As she waited, she walked around the room trying to comfort the other mothers who were experiencing similar agony.

When the news came that her daughter was gone, her thoughts turned to Catherine’s older brother, Freddy. He was only eight. Freddy and Catherine were so close. She turned to her pastor and said, “Father, come with me, and let’s tell Freddy.”

Together, they gently told the eight-year-old boy of the death of his sister.

The little boy looked back at them and asked, “Who am I going to play with now? I have nobody to play with now.”

B
arbara Sibley wasn’t going to get her car out of the parking lot anytime soon. She and her son Daniel hitched a ride back home with her friend Sandra instead. She draped her suit jacket over her son, whose coat and backpack were still inside the classroom. As she got out of the car she saw her father-in-law, Robert Sibley Sr., waiting in the driveway.

“You’ve had quite a morning,” he said.

Barbara, who had been okay until that moment, collapsed on the driveway, and began crying hysterically. She was having trouble breathing. All she kept repeating was: “I was so afraid.”

Her father-in-law helped her into the house where she regained her composure before checking on her twin boys, both of whom were supposed to be going to Sandy Hook Elementary School later that day for afternoon kindergarten.

“We have no school today!” the kids shouted with excitement, before one of them took on a sadder tone when he remembered a sugary treat he would be missing. “Does this mean I can’t get my chocolate milk?” he innocently asked.

Daniel walked up the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him, pulled the covers up over his head, and slept the rest of the day.

W
hen the tactical team from the Connecticut State Police arrived at 36 Yogananda Street, the address attached to the black Honda Civic, which had been registered to Nancy Lanza, Adam Lanza’s body had yet to be positively identified and they were on full alert for an armed conflict. The officers sped up the long driveway and quickly took positions around the exterior. There were no signs of activity inside the home. A large wreath with a red bow hung on the front door and a fresh garland twisted up the columns in front of the entranceway. The driveway was empty, and in the attached garage sat a BMW, idle.

Down the block seventeen more law enforcement vehicles had gathered, blocking off the street. Officers in full riot gear quickly swarmed through the quiet residential upper-middle-class neighborhood, some going from door to door and asking residents to leave their homes. Within seconds of arriving several officers
stormed through the front door of the Lanza home, moving quietly from room to room, rifles drawn. The first thing they noticed was that the house was in immaculate order. In the spacious living room, the television was turned off and the remotes were neatly stacked on an end table. In the kitchen, recently watered green plants rested on a sill. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. The team of officers began fanning out in different directions, searching throughout the house.

As they entered the basement, they saw military posters lining the walls and video games stacked neatly in rows not far from a large television screen. The windows had been darkened with shades to prevent sunlight from coming through.

They entered the two upstairs bedrooms belonging to Adam. In the room where his bed was located, they found journals and drawings. They found the covers on his bed neatly laid out and five matching tan colored shirts along with five pairs of khaki pants in his closet. In his other room, which he shared with his mother, investigators found his computers. The hard drives had been destroyed and the internal discs that stored the data scratched. An empty cereal bowl rested nearby. Again, room darkeners covered the windows. Adam had duct-taped black garbage bags over the windows to prevent any light from getting through.

In the upstairs master bedroom they found the remains of a woman. She was in her pajamas, lying on her back. The shades were still drawn. The four gunshot wounds to her head had nearly decapitated her. The wounds suggested the weapon had been pressed directly against her head when fired. At the foot of the bed lay a
Savage Mark .22-caliber rifle with three live rounds inside and one spent cartridge.

A
s investigators began to sort through the home for clues, it soon became clear that the massacre wasn’t a spontaneous act of violence or a momentary break from reality but the result of a tremendous amount of planning and preparation. It had been years in the making.

Most disturbingly, they found a gruesome list of the top five hundred mass murderers in world history. The massive spreadsheet, seven feet long and four feet wide, had ranked the killers in order from most kills to least, along with the precise make and model of the weapons used, all typed out in a tiny nine-point font. The carefully researched document appeared to have taken years to create.

Along with the spreadsheet, investigators discovered newspaper clippings and printed-out articles showing that the killer had created a virtual who’s who of mass-murder infamy. Several killers Adam gave particular interest to according to investigators included:

• James Holmes, who killed twelve and wounded fifty-eight moviegoers in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in June of 2012.

Holmes parked his car near the exit door of the theater, changed into black clothing, and suited up in military gear preparing for a bloodbath. He put on a gas mask, a load-bearing
vest, a ballistic helmet, bullet-resistant leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector, and tactical gloves, and carried a 12-gauge Remington 870 Express Tactical shotgun, and a Smith & Wesson M&P semiautomatic rifle with a hundred-pound drum magazine before walking inside the theater and unloading on the audience.

Holmes fired off seventy rounds, many of which hit multiple people, and was only prevented from shooting more because his rifle jammed. He was apprehended by police outside the theater.

• Charles Carl Roberts IV, who murdered five Amish girls and injured five others inside a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 2006.

Roberts was armed with a handgun, shotgun, rifle, stun gun, two knives, and six hundred rounds of ammunition when he barricaded himself in the schoolhouse along with twenty-eight other people. The deranged gunman ordered the hostages, most of them children, to line up against the chalkboard and then released all but ten female students.