A simple sign outside Sandy Hook Elementary School declares warmly: ‘Visitors Welcome.’ It was put up long before the school decided this year, in a flurry of concern about security, to lock all external doors to the outside world at 9.30am every morning.
Not that Adam Lanza took any notice of the new protocol on Friday. Police say he ‘forced his way’ across the threshold, apparently smashing a glass door.
Inside, 575 children aged from five to ten were excitedly preparing for a day of Christmas-themed activities.
Pale and dressed in black, Lanza was closing in on them. From where he left his car to their classrooms is roughly 100 yards, and he covered the ground quickly. Before he could reach the children he first had to negotiate the entrance, and the staff sitting in meetings in rooms leading off it.
In the normal way, they would not have been unduly disturbed by his appearance; many knew him as the ‘mild-mannered’ son of popular supply teacher Nancy Lanza.
But on this occasion he was carrying four semi-automatic pistols, among them a Glock and a 9mm Sig Sauer. And as soon as he set foot inside the foyer he began firing.
By 9.35am the worst school massacre in American history was over. In all, the shooting had lasted barely three minutes, but it left 20 children and six teachers and school staff dead.
When the children had begun filing into school on Friday, Lanza had already murdered his mother at their four-bedroom home five miles away on hilly Yogananda Street, Newtown. Nancy Lanza is also thought to have been shot.
Afterwards, Lanza took the keys to her black Honda Civic and packed a .223-calibre Bushmaster rifle, often favoured by snipers, and the four pistols in the boot before driving to the school. He set off at about 9.10am.
In the event, for unknown reasons, he left the rifle in the car when he reached Sandy Hook.
Once inside the main building, he cut down all who crossed his path, shooting them, said surviving staff, ‘execution style’ from close range. At first, witnesses reported hearing a ‘pop pop pop’ sound from a hallway near classroom number nine.
Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, who were in a meeting in a room just off the main foyer, bravely went to investigate. Others simply hid under desks.
Probably known to Lanza, Mrs Sherlach had provided succour to generations of children, but at 56 was due to retire in a few months.
He shot her dead without saying a word. In fact, he said nothing throughout the killing spree. Next, he turned his gun on Mrs Hochsprung, a widely admired leader and inspirational teacher. The two women – described as the ‘very soul of our school’ – were later found lying over each other in a pool of blood.
Within seconds the first call to the emergency services was made by an unidentified female member of staff.
After bursting through the door of a kindergarten class, Lanza, in an act of unimaginable horror, began executing child after child.
Youngsters hid in cupboards, barricaded themselves in toilets and huddled together in nooks and crannies as far from the shooting as they could reach.
After Lanza wiped out one class, he moved on to the one next door. There he did the same before turning the gun on himself.
By 9.45am, when the first SWAT team arrived, the shooting had been over for several minutes, though terrified children and teachers were still in hiding and had to be coaxed out by police. One teacher, Maryrose Kristopik, 50, was praised by parents for saving the lives of 15 children by hiding them in a closet.
Outside, officers swarmed with dogs and roared overhead in helicopters. There were armoured cars and ambulances and, at nearby Danbury Hospital, doctors and nurses braced themselves for an onslaught of wounded victims.
But such was Lanza’s brutal efficiency that the influx never came. Only three people were admitted to hospital. Two of them died, a third was said to be doing well last night.
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