‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’
Stamford residents protest gun violence during vigil in honor of Sandy Hook
STAMFORD — For Stamford high school student Naomi Alvarado, the day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 10 years ago was one of the most confusing days of her young life.
At the time, the current high school student at the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering was a second grader at Hart Magnet Elementary School. It was Dec. 14, 2012, and as she was singing the “Water Cycle Song” with her classmates, a fire alarm went off. She and her classmates hid behind cubbies, as they had practiced before during lockdown drills.
“The quick drill turned into 30 minutes, then two hours,” Alvarado said, as she spoke to a crowd of roughly 50 people who gathered outside Ferguson Library in Stamford Wednesday night.
Eventually, Alvarado’s teacher checked her phone and burst into tears. A teacher from another class came and moved the class full of students into a different classroom.
“Even the walls couldn’t block out the noise of my teacher crying,” Alvarado said. “I didn’t know what was happening. None of us did.”
Days later, that teacher revealed to her students that the reason she began crying was because she had just found out that her nephew was one of the 20 students murdered by a gunman who entered Sandy Hook that day.
“I wish I could end my story here but I can’t because year after year, there have been more school threats and mass shootings,” Alvarado said.
She was one of a handful of speakers who shared their stories and thoughts related to gun violence during a vigil organized by the Enough Campaign, a Stamford gun violence prevention group. The
organization holds the annual vigil in commemoration of the anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown that took the lives of 26 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the shooting.
The vigil took place outside and included a 26-second moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Newtown shooting, as well as a performance by Lily O’Connor, a sixth grade student at Scofield Magnet Middle School, who sang the song “Hallelujah.”
Mayor Caroline Simmons, who spoke standing next to a collection of a lit candles placed on the steps of the Ferguson Library, said 2022 was the deadliest year of mass shootings in the history of the United States. In May alone, 10 people were murdered in Buffalo, N.Y., inside a supermarket and 19 students and two staff members were gunned down inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Just last month, five people were killed and many more injured inside an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“It’s unacceptable. So as we are here today to commemorate the lives and the victims, we are also here to say ‘enough is enough’ and we are not going to tolerate this gun violence anymore in our country,” Simmons said.
Other speakers included Stamford High School students Keyli Maldonado and Laura Sanchez; Stamford resident and activist Wilner Joseph, whose brother’s murder in Bridgeport in 2017 spurred him to create the afterschool program Young Athletes 4 Change at Cloonan Middle School; Dana Horowitz; and Barry Woods, the director of outreach and young adult programming for Stamford Boys & Girls Club.
Horowitz’ father Bruce Horowitz was killed by a gunman in her hometown of Hamden in 1992.
As many of the speakers highlighted, the toll of gun violence is not just felt by the dead and their families.
Zoe Goldberg, a senior at AITE, spoke about the trauma she witnessed as a student, even though she never went through the horrific experience of being in a school in which an active shooter had gained entry.
Goldberg said that one day at Stillmeadow Elementary School when she was in the second grade, the school went into a lockdown.
She sat with her classmates in a dark room and waited for hours, she said.
One of her friends began crying, fearful she was going to die, Goldberg said.
“I remember sitting there trying to comfort her and our teacher shushing us, afraid that if we made too much noise, somebody would come to our door,” Goldberg said.
She remembered hearing a series of loud bangs, and growing increasingly terrified that a shooter was in the school. Then, another set of bangs on the door of the classroom she was in.
“And this time I thought it was the shooter,” she said. “Luckily, I was wrong. This time it was a police officer.”
No shooter had entered the building that day; the school had gone into lockdown because of a mistake made by a substitute teacher, Goldberg said.
“I still have no idea what the original set of bangs I and my classmates heard was to this day,” she said. “But I still remember the terror it etched not only into my mind but into my classmates’ minds.”
Alvarado urged those in attendance to keep fighting for change.
“It saddens me that the same events that happened at Sandy Hook are continuing today,” she said. “So while today we’re honoring those who lost their lives at Sandy Hook, let’s also honor them by seeking the end to gun violence. Only through raising awareness, inspiring peace and honoring can we initiate change.”