Teacher Victoria Soto was killed while trying to shield her students from a gunman who stormed the elementary school on Friday. (
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A firefighter and his child attend the funeral for Daniel Barden, 7, at St. Rose of Lima Church today. (Getty Images)
She was always a “superhero.”
Victoria Soto, the young Newtown, Conn., elementary school teacher who selflessly gave up her life trying to save the lives of little kids from a rampaging gunman, today was honored by more than a 1,000 mourners, including her sisters, who said that being being a hero was nothing new for her.
Music legend Paul Simon joined the mourners. He sang his classic “The Sound of Silence.”
PHOTOS: SANDY HOOK SCHOOL MASSACRE
READ THE HEARTFELT EULOGIES OF THE SOTO SISTERS AND VICTORIA’S BEST FRIEND
“My sister gave her life to save her kids, and if that’s not true strength and heroism, I don’t know what is,” Soto’s sister Carlee Soto told an overflow audience at teacher’s funeral at Lordship Community Church in Straford, Conn.
“The expression, ”You don’t know what you have until it’s gone’ is true. My best friend is gone.”
Another sister, Jillian Soto, said “Over the past five days, people have been thinking of you as a hero, many hoping that they could do the things that you have done to touch the lives of so many, whether it be through your actions on that terrifying morning or through the way that you brought curiosity, excitement and joy to your students every day.”
“Each of those are reasons why you are in so many people’s hearts, but truthfully you have been a hero to me for a lot longer than five days,” a sobbing Jillian said at the church, where many of the mourners wore ties, scarves and ribbons in her favorite color of green.
“You have been my big sister, the one I’ve always looked up to, the one I’ve always wanted to be like. When we were little I thought you had style, so I would take your clothes and wear them to school so I could look cool like you. When you would have friends over, I would always want to tag along and hang out with you guys. I admired you so much, and this has never stopped.”
“You are beautiful, smart, funny, goofy and you had amazing smile,” Jillian said.
Soto, 27, was fatally shot last Friday morning by crazed 20-year-old Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School — who ended up killing 20 kids and five other adults before committing suicide.
Soto has been credited with herding her first-grade students into a closet as Lanza began shooting kids in another classroom.
When a group of six of her pupils tried to bolt from the room, Lanza shot them and Soto as she tried to shield them from his bullets.
Her sister Jillian, referring to those brave actions, said, “You just needed to be an angel, an angel to the 19 children you protected, the 19 families who trusted you to the fullest, to the entire school that adored you, to a community that you helped bring together, and to people across the country that you gave faith to in this time.”
“Somebody wrote me a letter about the recent tragedy that I would like to share with you; in it, it said they had to sit down with three small children, explaining to them that monsters sadly do exist out there,” Jillian said.
“But they felt relief that because of my sister, they were able to tell them that superheroes also are very real. You are my superhero and I am so proud of you and all you have done in your 27 short years.”
“I am so happy that you were my big sister, and please guide me as I try to take on this world without you. Now, heaven has a princess and a rockstar . . . and an amazing teacher Vicki. Love, your pain-in-the-butt baby sister Jillian.”
Soto’s best friend Rachel Schiavone told mourners that the slain teacher “was strong and totally fearless, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that Vicki died protecting her kids.”
“She loved them more than anything, and this year she bragged that she had the best first grade class ever,” Schiavone said. “She talked about each of them. And on Friday, they were supposed to be making gingerbread houses.”
Soto’s aunt Debbie Cronk said called her “absolutely gorgeous,” and recalled the day Soto told her that she was becoming a teacher.
“What an honor it was when Vicki followed in my footsteps and became a teacher,” Cronk said. “I can still hear her voice the day she called me and said, ‘Aunt Debbie, I got a job teaching first grade in Newtown.’ I think I was more excited than she was.”
Soto’s funeral was not the only one held on Wednesday.
The first of Wednesday’s funerals in Newtown was for 7-year-old Daniel Barden, a gap-toothed redhead and the youngest of three children whose family described him as “always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly affectionate, fair and so thoughtful towards others, imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in conversation: in all, a constant source of laughter and joy.”
Students Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi were to be laid to rest later Wednesday, and calling hours were being held for popular 47-year-old principal Dawn Hochsprung. She and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives.
“The first few days, all you heard was helicopters and now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day,” he said. “It’s difficult. It’s just a constant reminder.”
Most students in Newtown went back to school Tuesday except those from Sandy Hook Elementary, where a gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle slaughtered the children and six teachers and administrators Friday. He also killed his mother at her home. If police know why, they have not said.
Students at Sandy Hook, which serves kindergarten through fourth grade, will resume classes in a formerly shuttered school in a neighboring community in January.
In the meantime, mourners overlapped at back-to-back funerals that started Monday and will continue all week.
The massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control.
Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday it plans to sell its stake in Freedom Group, maker of the Bushmaster rifle, following the school shootings. In Pittsburgh, Dick’s Sporting Goods said it is suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the shooting. The company also said it’s removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown.
Lawmakers who have joined the call to consider gun control as part of a comprehensive, anti-violence effort next year included 10-term House Republican Jack Kingston, a Georgia lawmaker elected with strong National Rifle Association backing.
President Obama was “actively supportive” of a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce legislation to reinstate an assault weapons ban, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. While Obama has long supported a ban, he did little to get it passed during his first term.
The National Rifle Association, silent since the shootings, said in a statement that it was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.” It gave no indication what that might entail.
And no indication has been made publicly about the motive of 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who, clad all in black, broke into Sandy Hook Elementary and opened fire on students and staff.
Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, at their home, and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school.
Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack, even as more fragments of Lanza’s life emerged.
As a teenager, Lanza was so painfully shy that he would not speak or look at anyone when he came in for a haircut about every six weeks, always accompanied by his mother, said stylists in the Newtown hair salon Lanza frequented.
Cutting Adam Lanza’s hair “was a very long half an hour. It was a very uncomfortable situation,” stylist Diane Harty said, adding that she never heard his voice.
Another stylist, Jessica Phillips, said Nancy Lanza would give her son directions about what to do and where to go. He would move only “when his mother told him to,” said a third stylist, Bob Skuba.
Even as questions lingered about the gunman and his motive, appreciation for those who helped students escape him persisted — as well as devotion to preventing it from happening again.
Andrei Nikitchyuk’s young son, a boy nicknamed Bear, was on his way to the principal’s office with a classmate Friday morning. The children were classroom helpers tasked with the most mundane of school day chores: delivering a teacher’s attendance sheets. Before they made it, the children heard a series of loud bangs that sounded like someone slamming a door. Bear later told his dad he “saw bullets flying past.”
Nikitchyuk, who was in Washington on Tuesday to support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence’s push for tougher gun regulations, said teacher Abby Clements pulled his son and the boy’s classmate into a nearby classroom as the shooting started.
“He was saved by a wonderful teacher,” Nikitchyuk said, his voice cracking slightly. “She pulled them into a classroom and barricaded that door.”