Newtown: An American Tragedy (3 page)

And there was no suppressing Olivia Engel’s joy either as the hours counted down to one of the final weekends before Christmas. After school, Olivia, who was active in her church’s CCD musical program, was going to make her stage debut in the live nativity at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown.

Olivia was going to play an angel.

D
awn Hochsprung quietly sneaked into the school cafeteria to get a peek at her fourth-graders as they put on their Winter Concert dress rehearsal in preparation for the next day’s big event.

“Aren’t they amazing?” she whispered to a local reporter who had come to check out the event.

It was Wednesday, December 12, 2012, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal was overjoyed with her students’ practice performance—so much so that she even took time to pull out her iPad to snap a few photos of the children in midsong.

“Sandy Hook students enjoy the rehearsal for our fourth-grade winter concert—a talented group led by Maryrose Kristopik!” she happily tweeted along with the picture of her schoolkids, who were all wearing white shirts and black bottoms as they belted out holiday tunes.

Dawn had held a deep affection for Sandy Hook and its students
since she first became principal in 2010. A big kid herself, on Pajama Day she would walk into school dressed in sleepwear with a pillow tucked under her arm, or wearing a blouse and a pair of pants inside out on Backward Day. In November, Principal Dawn transformed herself into the “book fairy.” Dressed in a long, flowing, sparkling white dress and adorned with a golden crown on her head, the magical fairy went from room to room with her blue wand to thank the children for reading and sprinkle them with “fairy dust.”

And she was always tweeting about what her students were up to, composing 140-character blasts like “Sandy Hook kinders write lists, select grocery items, and pay the cashier at Mrs. Vollmer’s new Supermarket Center”—also attaching a photo of the children in the checkout line, cash in hand. The same year she was named principal, Dawn, forty-seven, told the
Newtown Bee,
“I don’t think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day.”

As principal, she was seemingly everywhere at once, never missing an athletic competition or a school concert. She could often be spotted in the stands catching up on administrative work or with her nose buried deep inside a book. Principal Dawn also stayed up-to-date on the cutting edge of educational innovations. She had recently launched an “Appy Hour” to discuss mobile applications that supported school curriculum.

And positivity, it seemed, was something she consistently observed at Sandy Hook in the way of mantras. “I can. You can. We can. Because we can!” was just one of her many sayings that became known schoolwide. She outlined her aggressive educational philosophy in the “Sandy Hook Elementary School Handbook”:

“Sandy Hook is committed to building lifelong learners, capable of responding to the changing needs and demands of our world. We hope to actively engage students in learning and help them become responsible and contributing members of our school community. Most importantly, we strive to ensure that our school is a secure, caring, and productive place for children and adults.”

Few had doubts that she was succeeding. The delightful Dawn did have a reputation of high expectations and, as one Sandy Hook teacher put it, “If you didn’t meet those expectations she would shoot you this look of daggers.” Standing only five feet two inches tall, the petite principal “expected a lot out of her staff, but she expected even more out of herself.”

Above all else, Dawn’s expectation was to always keep Sandy Hook safe. “We can’t control what happens inside their homes, but when they come here our children need to know that they are coming to a safe haven,” the principal told one parent just a few days before the 2012 Winter Concert. “Without that internal feeling of security, all the teaching in the world won’t make any difference.”

Several new safety measures had been implemented at the school since Dawn arrived two years earlier. Before entering the building, visitors had to first ring the doorbell. Security cameras installed outside the school’s main entrance let the clerical staff identify the person before hitting the buzzer and allowing them in. Once inside, parents had to show photo identification before going any farther.

“Safety first at Sandy Hook. . . . It’s a beautiful day for our annual evacuation drill!” Dawn tweeted on the morning of October 17, 2012, along with a picture of six rows of children standing diligently
in the school parking lot behind a line of orange construction cones.

The school also employed safety drills. Several times a year students and staff members would get into “lockdown,” where teachers and children would lock their doors, find a hiding place, and remain quiet.

At the beginning of the school year, a letter outlining the new security procedures was sent to Sandy Hook families. “Our district will be implementing a security system in all elementary schools as part of our ongoing efforts to ensure student safety. As usual, exterior doors will be locked during the day. Every visitor will be required to ring the doorbell at the front entrance and the office staff will use a visual monitoring system to allow entry. Visitors will still be required to report directly to the office and sign in. If our office staff does not recognize you, you will be required to show identification with a picture ID,” the letter stated.

After several parents expressed concern about young children walking home unattended, Principal Dawn launched new guidelines for children taking the school bus home. At a school board meeting in September, Dawn explained to parents the school district’s new bus drop-off policy, which stated that students between kindergarten and fourth grade would be let off at the bus stop only if a parent or older sibling was around to walk them home.

If creating a safe learning environment was her first priority, a close second was caring for her devoted team of teachers and educational assistants and administrators, including special needs instructor, Anne Marie Murphy, and school psychologist, Mary Sherlach.

Anne Marie was highly respected for the gentle way she handled the children she looked after. The teacher was so beloved by one of her students, six-year-old Dylan Hockley, that he even kept a picture of the educator pasted to his refrigerator door. It was Anne Marie’s ability to communicate with her students, many of whom had learning difficulties, that parents most appreciated. Many said the same of school psychologist Mary, too. She had an uncanny ability to patiently sift through a child’s wandering sentences, pinpoint the problem, and quickly reach a workable resolution.

After eighteen years at Sandy Hook, Mary was preparing to retire following the 2012 school year to spend more time with her husband, William, at their home at Owasco Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

But the fifty-seven-year-old would leave a band of talented new educators in her stead: Rachel D’Avino, a twenty-nine-year-old behavioral therapist who worked with children on the autism spectrum, and Lauren Rousseau, who had recently been given a full-time position as a “building sub.”

Rachel appeared to be a perfect fit. As a child, Rachel struggled with learning disabilities but overcame them and went on to earn advanced degrees before landing a temporary job at Sandy Hook Elementary School, about a half hour’s drive from her home in Bethlehem. Her first day at the new job was December 12, and that night she felt inspired to write a note for a time capsule to be read by a future generation.

“It is my DREAM that you know my name as a leader in behavior analysis for children and adults with autism. However, I will be thrilled if I make a few people have an easier, more enjoyable life.”

Lauren Rousseau was already a familiar face to the principal. Dawn and her husband, George, had been longtime family friends of Rousseau, dating back to 1994 when George was her fourth-grade teacher at Roberts Avenue Elementary School in nearby Danbury.

Most in Newtown would describe the interconnectedness of the small-town school and the relationships between the principal, the faculty, the student body, and their parents with one word: familial.

O
n December 13, 2012, the night of the annual Sandy Hook Elementary School Winter Concert, the seats of Newtown High School’s auditorium were packed with rows of parents, teachers, and members of the community who could barely contain their anticipation. All the big names from town were in attendance, including James Frey, the minority whip of the Connecticut House of Representatives, who had arrived to see his two nieces, Joan and Bridget.

Some students fidgeted nervously, while others stared blankly out into the open space. As the clock wound down, a hush fell over the audience. Music teacher Maryrose then paused, raising her arms, and the small mouths of every little boy and girl opened wide to utter a single unifying note.

The sound of Christmas echoed joyously throughout the hall.

“It was beautiful,” Maryrose said. “Their voices lifted the entire room. It was just amazing.”

The fourth-graders sang a number of holiday melodies. And at the concert’s conclusion, the packed room gave the students a
standing ovation. The performers bowed, beaming at all the familiar faces.

One face was missing from the crowd. Victoria Soto, the school’s beloved first-grade teacher, was passionate about reading and decided she could not miss the local book fair taking place the same night. Victoria was another of Sandy Hook’s most prized assets. Vicki, as she was commonly known, began her teaching career at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2010 as an intern. Dawn, however, gave Vicki her own first-grade classroom the next year in 2011 and she wasted no time in making the place her own, with her brother, Carlos, decorating the walls with learning tools such as the letters of the alphabet—large A-B-C cutouts in the shape of zoo animals.

The students loved the pretty young teacher who sometimes chewed gum during class and lined her desk with pictures drawn by her students, many inscribed with notes of affection like, “I love Ms. Soto.”

On her Facebook page, Vicki wrote about her life:

“In my free time I love spending time with my black lab, Roxie. I love spending time with my brother, sisters, and cousins. I love spending time reading books on the beach, soaking up the sun. I also love flamingos and the New York Yankees.”

Vicki came from a tight-knit family and embraced the role of mentor to her two younger sisters, Jillian and Carlee, often lovingly hassling them about their future goals and ambitions. That Wednesday evening, after discovering that her sister Carlee hadn’t picked out her classes for spring semester, Vicki began teasing her, throwing papers and candy at her, jokingly trying to get her to start moving toward an academic future. She was also very close to Jillian,
who had decided to travel to Vermont to go on a short skiing vacation with her boyfriend and two other friends.

It was 9 
P.M
. by the time Vicki returned home from the Scholastic Book Fair in nearby Danbury. Her mother, Donna, had dinner waiting for her. Vicki sat down at the table and showed her a Christmas present she had bought for her brother.

The next day was “Gingerbread House Day” for the first-graders’ class, a day when parents were invited into the classroom to help their sons and daughters make the edible treats, listen to holiday music, and snack on baked goods. Vicki asked her mother if she could take some tissue paper to school to wrap the gingerbread homes at the end of the day to be given as holiday gifts to the parents.

“I’ll go get you more later,” Vicki assured her mother, promising that she would replace the paper when the family went on their scheduled shopping trip together on Saturday.

O
n a fall morning in 2006, thirteen-year-old Adam Lanza was suffering through another anxiety attack. His face flushed red, his eyes opened wide through sheer force of will. Adam was determined not to suffer through another day of eighth grade at Newtown Middle School.