‘I don’t want to die. I just want Christmas’
FIRST, HE killed his mother. Nancy Lanza’s body was found later at their home on Yoganda St in Newtown.
Nobody knows why 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then took her guns to Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six adults.
Somehow, he got past a security door to a place where children should have been safe from harm.
Theodore Varga and other fourth-grade teachers were meeting; the glow remained from the previous night’s fourth-grade concert. ‘‘It was a lovely day,’’ Varga said. ‘‘Everybody was joyful and cheerful. We were ending the week on a high note.’’
Suddenly gunshots rang out. ‘‘I can’t even remember how many,’’ he said.
Someone turned the loudspeaker on, so everyone could hear what was happening in the office.
‘‘You could hear the hysteria that was going on,’’ Varga said. ‘‘Whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring.’’
Gathered in another room for a 9.30am meeting were principal Dawn Hochsprung and Diane Day, a school therapist, along with a school psychologist, other staff members and a parent.
‘‘We were there for about five minutes chatting, and we heard Pop! Pop! Pop!’’ Day said. ‘‘I went under the table.’’
Hochsprung and the psychologist leapt out of their seats and ran out of the room, Day recalled. ‘‘ They didn’t think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on,’’ she said. Hochsprung was killed, and the psychologist was believed to have been killed as well.
A custodian ran around, warning people there was a gunman, Varga said. ‘‘He said, ‘Guys! Get down! Hide!’’’ Varga said. ‘‘ So he was actually a hero.’’
Did he survive? know.
In a first- grade classroom, teacher Kaitlin Roig heard the shots. She barricaded her 15
Varga
did
not students into a tiny bathroom, sitting one of them on top of the toilet. She pulled a bookshelf across the door and locked it.
She told the kids to be ‘‘absolutely quiet.’’ ‘‘I said, ‘There are bad guys out there now. We need to wait for the good guys.’ The kids were being so good,’’ she said.
‘‘They asked, ‘Can we go see if anyone is out there?’ ‘I just want Christmas. I don’t want to die, I just want to have Christmas.’ I said, ‘You’re going to have Christmas.’ ’’