Daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal battles rare cancer

NEWTOWN — Ten years ago Erica Lafferty faced the fight of her life to grieve her 47-year-old mother who was slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School with 25 first graders and educators.Then the conspiracy-based harassment started, culminating in hate mail and rape threats until Lafferty and other Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones for defamation, winning a stunning $965 million verdict after a month-long televised trial in Connecticut Superior Court in 2022.

Now just a short time after the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, the 37-year-old Winsted resident is confronted with a new fight — a “rare and challenging” cancerous tumor behind her eye, and pre-cancer in her lymph nodes.

An aggressive course of radiation and chemotherapy starts Thursday.

“My only hope is it is enough to keep me alive, because I have a lot more fight in me,” Lafferty told Hearst Connecticut Media during an interview on Monday. “I want to live to see my 48th birthday because my mom was murdered before she could see hers.”

Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung was hailed as a hero after her death for confronting the gunman in an attempt to protect the children at her school.

To treat Lafferty’s stage 2 primary orbital lymphoma, and the stage 0 cancer in her lymph nodes, Lafferty needs at least $60,000 of out-of-pocket money that she doesn’t have.

“[T]hey called it ‘rare and challenging’ to diagnose. This type of cancer makes up for only 1-to-2 percent of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Lafferty wrote in a post. “Typically these are slow growing tumors, however, mine tripled in size in just 14 weeks.”

A friend has organized a crowd-funding campaign to raise the $60,000 from everyday people.

By Monday evening, people on GoFundMe had contributed $28,000.