New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Raised with trauma, Sandy Hook survivors send hope to Uvalde
NEWTOWN — The survivors who were able to walk out of Sandy Hook Elementary School nearly a decade ago want to share a message of hope with the children of Uvalde, Texas: You will learn how to live with your trauma, pain and grief. And it will get better.
They know what’s ahead. There’s shock, followed by numbness. There are struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety. Survivor’s guilt. Anger that these shootings continue to happen in America. Reliving their trauma every time there’s another mass shooting.
They know it will be hard to say they are from Uvalde. That wellmeaning adults will sometimes make the wrong decisions to protect you. That grief can be unpredictable, and different for everyone.
“It’s been nine years since Sandy Hook,” said Ashley Hubner, 17, who was a second-grader at the Newtown school when 20 children and six educators were killed on Dec. 14, 2012. “We had nine years for this to not happen again. And yet it did. And now these kids are going to have to go through the same exact thing. That’s just, like, heartbreaking.“
On May 24, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. It was so striking to the Sandy Hook survivors because of how similar it was to their tragedy. Now on the cusp of adulthood, the survivors of Sandy Hook are telling their stories, some for the first time, about growing up as a mass shooting survivor to help the children in Texas, who return to school this week.
‘I feel like I’ve grown alongside of it.’
Marie Gay was a 9-year-old thirdgrader at the Sandy Hook school when the gunman shot his way into the building and killed the 26 victims, including her little sister, Josephine. All the children who died were firstgraders.
“Initially I thought it was a bear, the gunshots,” said Gay, now an 18year-old college student. “I don’t know. We lived in rural Connecticut. I heard them and my first thought was, ‘Oh, there’s totally a bear just banging on the walls of the school.’ ”
Marie said adults around her were all well intentioned, but some of what they did after the tragedy bothered her.
Her teachers would take her out of the classroom before conducting any emergency drills. They were also careful not to use phrases like “bullet points” around her, which she found silly.
She also felt “icky” about the thousands of gifts that poured into Newtown for all the children of Sandy Hook. She got upset the day hundreds of those presents were passed out to children who lined up outside the local intermediate school to get a doll or a game, she said.
“All that I could think about at the time was the one child in my sister’s class who survived,” she said. “I know I went through a lot too, but in my brain, I was like, I’m not understanding how all these people are like clamoring for gifts.”
Marie said the shooting in Uvalde brought so many feelings. It was disheartening, she said, but also made her want to get out there and fight for things like mental health reform and gun control.
She said she would tell the children of Uvalde that grief is individual and that their path forward will be their own — and to be gentle with themselves and kind to others. Their pain and grief will remain a part of them, but they will learn to live with it. She still gets anxiety in lecture halls and looks for exits when she’s in a classroom.
“There’s reminders of it daily here at random times,” she said. “But I feel like I’ve grown alongside of it and it’s made me a better person.”
‘I think what happened changed my entire life.’
For Ashley Hubner, the trauma became part of her life as she grew up. Sometimes she became sad and cried. But it wasn’t until middle school that her symptoms, including PTSD and depression, started to overwhelm her.
They would hit her harder around the anniversary of the shooting.
Ashley, now a senior at Newtown High School, was sitting in a circle with her second grade class for its usual morning meeting when the shooting started. Her sister, a kindergartner who also survived, was in another classroom.
Ashley and her classmates ran to the cubby area to hide. They heard their teacher call police to report an active shooter. The school intercom system clicked on, and everyone could hear gunshots, screaming and crying.
They were also frightened by footsteps they heard on the roof, which they didn’t know at the time were those of first responders. When police finally came to lead them out, she and her classmates didn’t want to open the door because they thought bad guys could be impersonating officers.
“We didn’t want to let them in,” she said. “And so like every single kid in my class screamed, ‘No!’ And it was so heartbreaking to hear a bunch of little kids screaming ‘No.’ But thank God we opened the door and it was actually the police.”
The children formed a line. They were told to put their hands on the shoulders of their classmates and to close their eyes — to avoid seeing any of the carnage — as they were led out of the building. They were brought to
a nearby firehouse, where she was reunited with her sister.
It was only last year that she was diagnosed with PTSD, depression, anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Many students have said they weren’t diagnosed with mental health and other disorders until years later, likely because they were so young at the time of the shooting and their symptoms didn’t fully develop for a while.
“I think what happened changed my entire life,” she said. “Maybe when you’re an adult like you have trauma and then you’re able to kind of like overcome it because you had this person who you were before.
“But when you’re so young,” she said, “you don’t really have the person that you were before. You just take your surroundings and you take what you’re taught and you take that trauma and you make it a part of your life and you grow up with that and you have to like process that in the years forward.”
Ashley said she gets angry sometimes at her parents and adults and kids in school for not recognizing her problems earlier or not believing her when she told them what she was going through. She began therapy only recently.
“Take what you are feeling and, like, do that research and like get that help,” she said, offering advice to Uvalde survivors. “It’s so important to like know who you are and know what you have and like what you’re dealing with so that you can go through life a lot easier and like make your quality of life better.”
‘Focus on healing yourself.’
In her college application essay, Liv Doscher wrote about how she and her classmates were forced into a more mature mindset because of what happened in their school.
“I don’t think anyone no matter your age should have to go through something like that,” she said. “But kids are not equipped to deal with stuff like that. No one is, but especially kids.”
Liv and her third-grade classmates ran to a carpet in their room when they first heard what turned out to be gunshots. Some thought it was a joke at first and laughed, she said. Others, like her best friend, started crying immediately. Liv was confused.
Her teacher put some paper over the window in the door to the hallway, but it fell down. Liv was nervous to look at the door in fear of what she might see. Plus the shades on the windows to the outside were up. Liv felt exposed and vulnerable.
Then police officers ran by the windows to the outside, saw the children and yelled at them to go into an adjoining classroom that shared a door with theirs. With the blinds down, the other classroom was very dark, and she couldn’t recognize people to find comfort.
“I remember just kind of trying to see in the dark, trying to recognize people,” she said.
Police led the students and teachers out an exit on the opposite side of the school from the shooting. Liv remembers seeing an officer with “a huge gun.” She didn’t even know then what a gun was.
Like Ashley, she suffered for years with anxiety, especially at school, before being diagnosed and treated. She learned last year that she has ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety.
She said it took so long because she kept what she was feeling inside, didn’t understand her emotions and didn’t reach out for help. She often felt numb. In December 2020, around the eighth anniversary of the shooting, she became extremely depressed and missed two weeks of school.