Metro

Madman kills 20 children at Connecticut elementary school, sending shock waves across US

GUNNED DOWN:Principal Dawn Hochsprung was conducting a meeting when the gunman barged in.

GUNNED DOWN:Principal Dawn Hochsprung was conducting a meeting when the gunman barged in. (Newtown Bee)

GUNNED DOWN: Principal Dawn Hochsprung was conducting a meeting when the gunman barged in. (
)

A black-clad gunman stormed into a Connecticut elementary school yesterday and unleashed one of the worst mass killings in US history — executing 20 children, including many from a kindergarten class.

Adam Lanza, 20, also killed his mother, Nancy, along with the school’s principal, a school psychologist and four other adults before shooting himself dead in the 9:30 a.m. rampage in the bucolic town of Newtown.

The shooting sent panicked teachers and students scrambling to safety from Sandy Hook Elementary School, with many taking refuge at a nearby firehouse.

“Evil visited this community today, and it’s too early to speak of recovery,” Gov. Dan Malloy said. “But each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut, we’re all in this together.”

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The shooting sent shock waves across the country:

* President Obama wiped away tears while offering his condolences in a national address — and ordered all flags at half-staff.

“Our hearts are broken today,” he said. “They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.”

* Parents pulled their kids out of schools from coast to coast, and gun-control advocates took the opportunity to rail for reform.

* Lanza used a Glock and a SIG Sauer during the rampage in the school — firing more than 100 rounds from multiple magazines while wearing a bulletproof vest. He also had a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, used to hunt big game, in the back of his car.

His mother had legally bought the weapons.

* Sources said the emotionally disturbed Lanza was carrying an identification bearing the name of his brother, Ryan, 24, who was initially believed by cops to be the gunman before authorities cleared him of any involvement.

“It wasn’t me,” Ryan wrote on Facebook. “I was at work.”

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The autistic Adam Lanza’s unimaginable day of carnage began with a “dispute” at home with his mom, whom he shot in the face before heading to her kindergarten-to-4th-grade school five miles away.

A school worker had buzzed Adam into the front door of the school, recognizing him as the kindergarten teacher’s son — completely unaware of the deranged man’s horrible intentions.

He marched into the school office, where Principal Dawn Hochsprung was meeting with staff members and a parent behind a closed door.

The group heard what therapist Diane Day described as “Pop, pop, pop!”

Day took cover under the table, but Hochsprung and a school psychologist ran out of the room to see what the noise was.

“They didn’t think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on,” Day told The Wall Street Journal.

Lanza shot both Hochsprung and a senior teacher, who threw her body against the door to hold it shut, Day said.

Hochsprung died at the scene. The teacher, Natalie Hammond, 40, took shots in the arm and leg but is expected to recover.

The school’s psychologist, Mary Sherlach, was also killed.

After the initial attack, Lanza walked down a hall to the kindergarten and another classroom and indiscriminately opened fire.

Robert Licata’s 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

“That’s when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door,” he said. “He was very brave. He waited for his friends.”

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Within minutes, 18 children were slaughtered. Two others were rushed to Danbury Hospital but could not be saved.

A custodian ran through the halls warning of a gunman on the loose, and someone switched on the intercom, alerting people in the building to the attack — and perhaps saving many lives — by letting them hear the hysteria going on in the school office, a teacher said.

SWAT-team members stormed the school as soon as they arrived, but the carnage was done.

They rushed out surviving students and teachers and were left to sift through a scene of unspeakable horror.

Colleen Poundstone was walking her two dogs when she heard “a firecracker kind of noise” from the school, about 300 feet from her property.

Minutes later, she saw five fourth-graders running from the school through a field to her house.

“I tried to get them to stay with me. I offered them hot chocolate, but they looked spooked,” she told The Post. “One boy kept saying all he wanted to do was to go home.”

The children headed back toward the field, but Poundstone begged them to stay on the street: “Do not go through the field.”

A short time later, a state trooper ordered her inside.

Many of the responders needed grief counselors.

“This is the worst incident that we have ever experienced here in Newtown,” Lt. George Sinko said. “Our officers are professionals, and we will deal with this.”

Police officers took the students to a nearby firehouse to be reunited with their parents.

Some parents arrived at the staging area only to learn their children were among the dead.

Brenda Lebinski was one of the lucky parents.

“I saw her, and it was the happiest moment of my life,” she said of her 8-year-old daughter.

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Gov. Malloy was on scene in the afternoon to comfort survivors.

“Beautiful children had their life taken away from them as well as adults whose responsibility it was to educate and supervise those children,” he said.

Richard Wilford, whose 7-year-old son, Richie, is a second-grader, said: “There’s no words. It’s sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him.”

Family members and friends filled the pews for evening Mass at St. Rose of Lima Church.

“This is a small town, very knit together and everyone knows everyone,” said Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Bridgeport Diocese. “We’re here to pray with them and guide them through.”

In the nation’s capital, people from across the country gathered outside the White House for a vigil to remember the victims.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York offered prayers and condolences to those affected by the shooting, which he said “wrenches the hearts of all people.

“Once again, we speak against the culture of violence infecting our country,” he said in a statement. “All of us are called to work for peace in our homes, our streets and our world.”

Additional reporting by Dan MacLeod, Mel Gray, Natalie O’Neill and Post Wires