By then, Saunders had already begun making a name for himself as a journalist. On May 16, 1948, as Cold War tensions were building, he wrote an editorial under the headline, “Suppose All America Prayed for Peace.” The article called on all religions to unite in common prayer, saying: “A troubled Christian nation should turn to prayer. Its people should lift their voices as from a single throat in supplication to the Divine Architect of our destinies, remembering always, ‘Thy will be done.’ ”
The editorial spurred a national debate leading to a national day of prayer and was later awarded a Pulitzer Prize, but the takeaway for Patricia was how one editorial from one small town could affect change on a national level.
“I was taken aback by the influence he had. It was just amazing,” Patricia later recalled.
She took that experience home to Massachusetts and went on to earn a place at the University of Bridgeport, becoming the first person in her family to go to college. Her education was interrupted when she married Robert M. Llodra in 1963. Within the next few years the couple had three children, Michael, Sharon, and Beth, and began looking for a town with a good school system.
“We visited Sandy Hook Elementary before we decided to buy a house in Newtown and we couldn’t have been more impressed,” Patricia said. “It was a big part of the reason we moved to Newtown. We wanted our kids to go to the Sandy Hook Elementary School.”
The young family moved into an old farmhouse on Riverside Drive, close to the school, and seventeen years after dropping out of school, Patricia went back to earn her degree. She received praise for her roll-up-the-sleeves no-nonsense management style as she worked through several jobs, including waitress, bartender, teacher, principal, and executive coach, until eventually making the leap into politics.
Patricia was first elected to Newtown’s Legislative Council in 2005, and easily won reelection in 2007. In 2009, she ran on the ballot for first selectman, running on a platform of disciplined spending, and defeated Gary Fetzer, who served on the local board of selectmen, by 1,672 votes. Two years later, Patricia campaigned for a second term, espousing the continued need to get Newtown’s fiscal house in order. The town overwhelmingly voiced their approval and she defeated William Furrier, a candidate on the Independent ballot, by 3,600 votes.
As Patricia sat at her desk on Friday morning, December 14, she turned on her computer and opened up her schedule to decide how to best manage the challenges of the day ahead. The second week of December had been a busy one full of long meetings and lots of number crunching for Newtown’s chief executive and administrative officer. Next year’s budget still hadn’t been finished and an urgency had set in about completing the task before the upcoming Christmas break.
Then the phone rang. It was Maureen Will, the director of communications.
“The schools are going into lockdown,” she said. Maureen hung up, promising to get more information to her as soon as it became available.
This is serious, Patricia thought, waiting by her phone for more information.
She wouldn’t be waiting long.
Across the hall, the deputy director of land use, Rob Sibley, was sitting in a meeting opposite Donna Culbert, the public health director. They were discussing the pending approval of a residential sewer when Rob’s pager went off. He decided to ignore it and continue with the meeting. Debbie Aurelia, the town clerk, had also stopped by the office, and now the three found themselves talking nonchalantly about the bone-chilling weather that morning.
Like most people who came to Newtown, Rob Sibley and his wife, Barbara, chose the town because of the affordable country living and small-town lifestyle all within a commutable distance to New York City—and, of course, because of the fantastic reputation of Sandy Hook Elementary. In 2004, their first child, Daniel, was born, and three years later Barbara gave birth to twin boys. In Newtown, Rob was able to indulge his lifelong dream—he had always wanted to be a firefighter—and become an EMT at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company in addition to his government job, while Barbara continued working in advertising and began a freelance writing career.
In a short time, the family forged roots in the community. Rob’s mother, Jane Sibley, was a minister of visitation at Newtown United Methodist. His father, Rob Sr., was a retired police officer from nearby New Canaan. Life couldn’t have been better for the young family.
“We found Newtown. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We felt like we had stumbled on such a little gem, a real diamond in the rough,” Barbara explained.
They also fell in love with the school, Sandy Hook Elementary. “It was just the ideal place.”
Rob was still sitting in his office when Donna Culbert, who had left the meeting momentarily, walked back into the room. She had a concerned look on her face. She had heard something on the police scanner in a nearby room about shots being fired at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “Something has happened at Sandy Hook,” she told Rob. “Don’t you have a child who goes there?”
Rob picked up his pager and looked at the message he had ignored earlier. It was an alert from the fire department. There had been a shooting at the school.
“I have to go,” he said and he began walking to his car.
His phone rang. He picked up. It was Barbara. Her voice was shaky. She had been at the school’s front entrance, about to drop off the Harry Potter book their third-grade son had left at home, when the sound of gunshots rang out.
“I don’t know what you know or what you heard,” she said. “I’m hiding behind a Dumpster.”
“I know something’s going on at the school,” Rob told her. “I’m on my way. Just pay attention to what’s going on.”
CHAPTER 8
FIVE MINUTES, 154 BULLETS
The pair of second-grade students was in the middle of a heated argument outside their classroom on the morning of December 14 when a stern voice froze them in midsentence: “Be nice to each other.”
The voice belonged to Principal Dawn Hochsprung, and her words resonated with conviction throughout the halls and into the classrooms where most of the 430 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School had already taken their seats and were ready to begin their day. It was part of the familiar catchphrase that all her students had grown to know so well. She employed it often, reciting it to those she stopped in the hallways, repeating it to the children eating lunch in the cafeteria, and sometimes even mentioning it in passing to parents and colleagues.
Be kind. It’s really all that matters.
For many, it would be the last voice they would hear before the intercom was switched on and morning announcements began.
First-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig was sitting at her desk deep in thought over the perfection of the morning. Before school that day, the first thing she’d noticed was the brilliant orange-red sunrise. It was an inspiring sight as it rose up over the water outside her Greenwich, Connecticut, apartment. Feeling the need to capture the moment, she pulled out her phone and snapped a picture before making the fifty-five-mile trek along I-84 east to Newtown.
Over her six years as a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, the lively twenty-nine-year-old had earned a reputation as a hard worker who was always willing to take the initiative. When Principal Dawn had been looking for someone to start a running club to promote healthy lifestyles at Sandy Hook earlier in the year, Kaitlin jumped at the opportunity, forming “Marathon Mondays,” a running club for the third- and fourth-grade students. The club was a hit. With the positive support of their teacher, the group of children began running one-mile stretches every Monday through the lush green space surrounding Sandy Hook. By June 4 they had already met their goal for the year of 26.2 miles.
Kaitlin waited for the secretary to finish the morning announcements over the intercom. Then at 9:30 A.M. she stood up with her class, faced the American flag above the doorway, and with right hands over their hearts, they recited the Pledge of Allegiance in unison. Kaitlin took attendance and then gathered her fif
teen children in a circle on the floor as she did every day.
The “Morning Meeting” was an opportunity for the students to greet each other, share some news of interest to the class, and learn about the day ahead. Kaitlin couldn’t imagine a pleasanter way to begin each day than to be surrounded by all her favorite little faces as they shared their own ideas and thoughts.
Teacher Victoria Soto began her day in one of her favorite places, the school library. She was in search of just the right book for her first-grade class when she spotted her colleague Yvonne Cech, a librarian.
“I need to find the perfect book,” Victoria said as she explained that she had to read it out loud to her class later that day in front of the parents.
Yvonne walked over to a nearby shelf and returned a short moment later with What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page, a children’s book that explores amazing things animals can do with their ears, eyes, mouths, noses, feet, and tails.
“The class will love it,” Victoria said. “Thanks.” She checked the book out before making the short walk from the library to her room.
As the children began to file into her bright and colorful classroom, Victoria greeted them with a cheerful smile. The walls were decorated with paper snowmen cut out of white construction paper, each with the name of the first-grade student prominently displayed so that the little ones could proudly point out their creations when their parents arrived to help make gingerbread houses that afternoon.
After the morning announcements had finished, Victoria looked around the room at all the smiling faces and asked: “Who’s excited?”
The class shouted back in a unified roar: “I am!”
As first-grade teacher Lauren Rousseau waited for class to begin, she texted back and forth with her boyfriend, Tony Lusardi, over their plans that night to see The Hobbit.
“Are you ready for the big night?” he texted her at 8:58 A.M.
Her students had long known Rousseau was a huge fan of all things Hobbit-related. The self-confessed “sci-fi dork” had been counting down the days until the release of the new J.R.R. Tolkien movie, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. After the movie, the couple had plans to go straight to a Lord of the Rings themed birthday party for one of her best friends. For the occasion Lauren had already baked “Hobbit” cupcakes with plastic pictures of the different actors embedded in the frosting.
“Of course I’m ready,” she had replied. “Woot! Woot! Let’s go!”
On the windowsill sat a line of Christmas ornaments left out to dry overnight that the children had made the day before to take home to their parents to decorate their trees. After the morning announcements, the public-address system shut off and Rousseau turned her attention to her students.
In the conference room across the hall, a team of fourth-grade teachers had just sat down to begin their weekly grade-level meeting when in walked Principal Dawn carrying a box of chocolates. The principal caught the four teachers in midconversation, raving about the previous evening’s Winter Concert. They were all in absolute awe of the show put on by their students.
“The kids did a great job,” Principal Dawn agreed, before spotting teacher Ted Varga’s neckwear, a green-and-red Christmas tie, and smiling. “Cute,” she jabbed, playfully.
The room broke out in laughter, in part a reaction to her dry sense of humor but more so because it was the kind of easy-breezy morning when laughter didn’t need a reason. The entire school was in full-blown holiday mode. In the corner of the small conference room lay gift-wrapped presents collected by the school for children in need. Even the Sandy Hook colors, white and green, blended nicely with the handmade red holiday decorations plastered about the classroom walls.
It was a beautiful morning. The air was crisp, the sky was blue. “The perfect morning,” Varga would later recall.
Principal Dawn was on her way to a parent-teacher conference. She walked the short distance to the main conference room where her A team of educators were already seated around a long table: school psychologist Mary Sherlach, lead teacher Natalie Hammond, reading consultant Becky Virgalla, school therapist Diane Day, math/science specialist Kris Feda, as well as a parent.
“Good morning, how are we today?” Dawn asked as she scanned their faces before sitting down at the head. “Looks like everyone is here and ready to go.” She dropped her notepad down on the table in front of her and gripped her pen with her right hand. “Let’s begin.”
Some time before 9:30 A.M. Adam Lanza pulled out of the driveway at 36 Yogananda Street for the last time. Though unconfirmed at the time of this writing, there’s reason to suggest that Adam’s initial target was the Newtown High School, less than four miles away on Berkshire Road. According to a source familiar with the investigation, Adam Lanza’s car was believed to have been identified on the school surveillance footage circling the school parking lot. The official believed Adam spotted two police cars, which were parked in the lot, and decided to move on. The official had not seen the actual footage.
Several minutes later he pulled onto Riverside Road. A right at the Sandy Hook volunteer firehouse on Dickinson Drive and headed toward the elementary school. He drove past the sign that read SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY. WELCOME VISITORS and made a slight loop around the Sandy Hook parking lot. He pulled to a stop against the vertical yellow lines of the school’s fire lane.
It was 9:34 A.M. He was forty feet from the building’s main entrance. The parking lot was crowded with cars but no one was coming in or out of the school. No one was milling about. He knew from his years as a student at Sandy Hook Elementary that the morning announcements had just ended and teachers would now be settling their students into the day’s routine.
He parked the car with the passenger’s side facing the brick wall near the main entrance and left his shotgun leaning against the passenger’s side door along with seventy shotgun rounds. If he would later choose to engage law enforcement in either an ambush or subsequent firefight, he would be well positioned.
He climbed out of the driver’s seat. Adam left the car doors open and walked at a deliberate pace toward the school’s large double doors. The rifle was in his hands. Ten magazines carrying thirty rounds each were in the pockets of his olive green utility vest. Two pistols, the Glock and the Sauer, were in his military-style cargo pants.
Adam was intensely familiar with his surroundings. His memory bordered on photographic and he remembered vividly everything from his days at Sandy Hook Elementary. He’d kept his old report cards and yearbooks. He still had a T-shirt signed by his fifth-grade classmates, even though it had been several years since it last fit him. On occasion, he had even talked to his mom about former teachers and classmates.
Adam hesitated briefly at the entrance. Then stepped back, pointed the rifle at the large plate-glass window to the right of the door, and pulled the trigger eight times. In less than a second, six .223-caliber bullets shattered the glass, creating a hole large enough for him to walk though.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
The explosion of glass and gunshots echoed throughout the hallways and classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary, destroying the peace and tranquility of the place forever.
Barbara Halstead, the secretary, was a few feet away in the main office when she heard the violent popping and the sound of crashing glass.
“What’s that?” nurse Sally Cox called out from the adjacent infirmary, accessible via a connecting door.
“I don’t know,” Barbara answered, standing up halfway from her hair.
As the secretary turned her head to investigate, she caught a glimpse of a lanky gaunt figure dressed in black. “Sally!” Barbara called out in a blood-curdling voice as she ducked down underneath her desk.
Broken glass was everywhere. The man was holding a rifle and walking in through the large hole to the right of the door where a glass pane had been. He was coming her way. Sally crouched down low to the floor underneath her computer desk, the a
larm in her friend’s voice serving as more than enough warning.
Seconds later the gunman walked into the main office and paused, standing quietly only a few feet from where Barbara was hiding. She stayed completely still, barely allowing herself to breathe.
He didn’t see her. The gunman turned and walked into the nurse’s office. He stood twenty feet from where Sally was hiding underneath her desk. Through the gaps between the furniture and a small hole, she could see a pair of legs from the knees down wearing dark clothing and boots. He was facing in her direction.
The nurse froze in fear. I’m going to die, she thought, as she held her breath. I’m going to die right here and right now.
Adam did not see her. After a few seconds, he turned and walked back into the hallway. Sally heard the gunman close the door behind him. As he left the main office, Barbara got up from the floor and tried to make her way to the nurse’s office. As she began to crawl in that direction, the phone rang. She scurried back across the floor to grab the receiver and in the process inadvertently tripped the microphone to the school public-address system.
“Hello,” she said.
“Barb, is everything okay?” a familiar voice on the other end of the line asked.
It was Laura Feinstein, a reading specialist. She had heard the echo of the pop, pop, pop all the way from her classroom in the back of the building and knew immediately from the sound of her coworker’s voice that something was wrong.
“There’s someone in the building shooting,” Barbara replied. “Get in lockdown.”
Laura ushered her students underneath her computer desk. Barbara hung up the phone and was trying again to crawl to the nurse’s office when the phone rang a second time. The secretary picked up the receiver and held it to her ear.
Newtown: An American Tragedy Page 8
