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6-Year-Old Newtown Victim Saved Classmates By Telling Them To Run
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Oct 19, 2013
Modified Oct 19, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Oct 19, 2013
Modified Oct 19, 2013
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It's been over ten months since the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and investigators are still trying to unpack what happened on that horrific day. Yesterday, the Hartford Courant revealed new heartbreaking details from the December 14th shooting, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 20 first graders and six adults, including the fact that one six year old boy manage to save some of his classmates before he was shot to death.
Jesse Lewis, 6, was a student in 27-year-old Victoria Soto's first-grade class, and though Jesse, Soto and a number of other students in the class were killed, 11 of his classmates survived. Some of those children told investigators they were huddled in a corner holding hands while Lanza was shooting, out of his line of fire; when Lanza's gun jammed for a second, he stopped firing, and Jesse yelled at them to run. Six students ran to safety. "He yelled, ‘Run!’ ” Jesse's mother, Scarlett Lewis, told The Associated Press. “Adam reloaded and shot him in the head.”
Other details that emerged from the Courant piece: Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, in the head four times before he drove to the school, and investigators believe he did so at close range. State officials also started setting up the office of Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who was among the adults killed, as a command center, not knowing a school secretary and nurse were hiding in a closet there. They stayed hidden for several hours until SWAT teams cleared the rooms. And while investigators initially believed Lanza entered sub Lauren Rousseau’s first grade room first—killing all but one student in that room— before heading to Soto’s classroom, some of Soto’s surviving students said they hadn't heard gunshots until Lanza came into their room.
Lanza destroyed his hard drive before making his way to Sandy Hook Elementary, and investigators have had a difficult time figuring out what drove him to commit such a heinous act. They've been trying to track his Internet activity in hopes it might yield some clues; for now, though, parents of the victims are left with only some small comfort. "When I heard he used his last few seconds on Earth to try to save his friends, I was not surprised,” Lewis said of her son Jesse. “I am so incredibly proud of him.”
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adam lanza
connecticut
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newtown
sandy hook elementary
Rebecca Fishbein
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