‘Pop, pop, pop’ marked start of massacre
As the 600 students of Sandy Hook filed into class on a bright, chilly morning in Newtown on Friday, principal Dawn Hochsprung sat down for a meeting in her office with six colleagues.
“You really couldn’t ask for a better principal,” Lisa Procaccini, the mother of an eight-year-old student, told reporters.
“A beautiful person — so warm and personable.”
Suddenly, at about 9:30 a.m., those in the meeting heard a loud “pop, pop, pop” from the hall. Hochsprung, 47, rushed outside with one of her vice-principals and the school psychologist. Only one of them came back.
Bloodied by a gunshot wound in the leg, the viceprincipal crawled back inside the office, frantically urging colleagues to call 911. The recurring nightmare for parents and teachers across the United States was a reality.
Dressed in black, armed with multiple weapons and apparently wearing a bulletproof vest, the gunman had begun opening fire in a kindergarten classroom.
Confused and screaming children and staff were soon moving, panicked, through the hallway, witnesses said. Police in Newtown, Conn. — a picturesque and prosperous town about an hour’s drive outside New York — were dispatched to the scene, quickly joined by state troopers and authorities from surrounding towns.
“WE SAW POLICE OFFICERS, AND HEARD THEM ON THE ROOF AND ON THE BUILDING.” ALEXIS WASIK
“We heard lots of bangs and we just thought it was the custodian knocking things down. But then we heard screaming,” one young student told reporters. “And so,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion, “we moved to the wall, and sat down. Police ran in and said, ‘Is he in here?’ Teachers said to get to a safe place, so we went into the closet.”
Frantically checking what Lt. Paul Vance called “every door, every crack and every crevice” for potential victims, police and teachers huddled children into the backs of classrooms around the school as they scoured the scene for the shooter. In one classroom, Alexis Wasik and her friends were terrified. “There were all these people,” she told reporters. “We saw police officers, and heard them on the roof and on the building.”
Parents across the area were soon receiving an automated “code red” phone message from the local school superintendent, alerting them to a shooting at the school. They rushed to the scene.
One, Stephen Delguidice, told reporters how a quickthinking teacher may have saved lives by hitting the button on the school public address system, alerting pupils and teachers to the intruder.
By 10:30 a.m., U.S. President Barack Obama was being briefed on the crisis by John Brennan, his homeland security adviser. All Newtown schools were locked down to ensure the safety of students and staff.
“This is a nice town, this is a good school — things like this don’t happen here,” one witness told reporters.
“Sandy Hook is a very, very good school in Newtown — and we’ve become nationally recognized for our schools,” said another bystander, a resident of a town with an average household income of more than $100,000.
“It’s a very good suburb, a lot of people work in New York and Hartford. It’s very safe, never any major issues.”
Procaccini said she did not know how she would explain to her child what had happened. “As my daughter was walking out, she saw blood and glass,” she said. “She did tell me about a little boy that was in a police officer’s arms, bleeding. I don’t think she really gets it right now. I don’t think she knows how serious things are. Time will tell.”