The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal battles rare cancer, costly chemo: ‘I have more fight’
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 monthlong 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 crowdfunding campaign to raise the $60,000 from everyday people.
“Her family is opting for the most aggressive treatment in hopes to rid her body of this poison as quickly as possible,” wrote fundraiser organizer Melissa Lewis on the crowd-funding site, GoFundMe. “Unfortunately, the chemotherapy drug, Luekeran, that Erica will be taking is not covered by insurance and it is costly — approximately $7,650 per treatment cycle and her doctor’s plan is at least three cycles. They’ve looked into many different grants and organizations
that offer assistance but as of now, they have not found anything that they qualify for.”
By Monday evening, people on GoFundMe had contributed $28,000.
Lafferty is grateful for the response but disheartened that some people don’t understand her situation.
People have seen the headlines
and know Lafferty won a $76 million jury award from Jones as part of the larger defamation verdict in 2022.Jones, who owes Sandy Hook families a total of $1.4 billion in defamation damages, is in personal bankruptcy. “I haven’t seen a penny of that, and I probably won’t for a very, very long time,” Lafferty said.