The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting and murder–suicide that occurred on December 14, 2012, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 26 people—20 first-grade children and six staff members—before killing himself. Lanza had earlier fatally shot his mother at their home before driving to the school, where he forced entry by shooting out a window near the locked front entrance. He was armed with a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns and killed the victims within about five minutes, before shooting himself as police arrived. It is the deadliest mass shooting at a K–12 school in U.S. history and the fourth-deadliest mass shooting by a single perpetrator in the nation.
A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office stated that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but provided no indication of why he did so, or why he targeted the school. A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 released that Lanza had Asperger's syndrome and, as a teenager, suffered from depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anorexia, but concluded that these factors "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts". The report went on to say, "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems [...] combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence [...] (and) access to deadly weapons [...] proved a recipe for mass murder."
The shooting renewed national debate over gun control, mental health policy, and school safety. President Barack Obama visited Newtown days later and formed a federal task force on gun violence; his administration subsequently announced a series of executive actions in January 2013. Proposed federal legislation to expand background checks and restrict certain semi-automatic weapons failed in the Senate that April, though Connecticut and dozens of other states went on to pass their own gun-control measures.
Victims' families founded several gun-violence-prevention organizations after the shooting, including Sandy Hook Promise and Moms Demand Action. The attack also became the subject of persistent hoax conspiracy theories, promoted most prominently by media personality Alex Jones, who was later ordered to pay victims' families nearly $1.5 billion in defamation damages. The original school building was demolished and replaced with a new one on the same site in 2016, and a permanent memorial to the 26 victims was dedicated in 2022.
Background
Sandy Hook Elementary School, which served students in kindergarten through fourth grade, was located at 12 Dickinson Drive within the Newtown Public Schools district. It was built in 1956 to relieve overcrowding in the town’s schools amid rapid population growth; Newtown’s population rose from 4,023 in 1940 to 7,448 in 1950. The building was designed by New York City architect Louis E. Jallade, whom the town chose for his specialization in school design, and stood on a 12-acre site the town had purchased from John Stefanko.
As late as November 30, 2012, 456 children were enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The school's security protocols had recently been upgraded, requiring visitors to be individually admitted after visual and identification review by video monitor. Doors to the school were locked at 9:30 a.m. each day, after morning arrivals.
Newtown is in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about 17 miles (30 km) from New Haven, 30 miles (50 km) from Hartford, and 60 miles (100 km) from New York City. Violent crime had been rare in the town of 28,000 residents; there was only one homicide in the town in the ten years before the school shooting.
Due to the Connecticut gun laws at the time, Lanza was old enough to legally carry a longarm, including all rifles and shotguns. However, Lanza would have been too young to own or carry handguns. The guns he used had been purchased legally by his mother from March 2010 leading up to January 2012. Lanza did not have a criminal record before the shooting.
Perpetrator
Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 – December 14, 2012) was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, and grew up in Newtown, Connecticut, where he was raised primarily by his mother following his parents' divorce in 2008. From an early age, he was diagnosed with a number of developmental and neurodivergent conditions, including Asperger syndrome, sensory processing disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was described by those who knew him as highly intelligent but profoundly withdrawn. He struggled throughout his childhood and adolescence with social interaction and emotional regulation.
As a teenager, Lanza became increasingly isolated and stopped attending school. His anxiety led to him being placed on homebound status, where he received instruction at home rather than attending classes. His mother declined treatments recommended by the Yale Child Study Center, preferring to accommodate his preferences rather than forcing him to adapt to social environments and improving his mental health. Lanza developed an intense preoccupation with mass violence, compiling extensive research on prior shootings and maintaining a spreadsheet documenting past attacks. Lanza withdrew from social contact almost entirely in the years before the shooting. Lanza had access to an arsenal of legally purchased firearms belonging to his mother, who was an avid gun enthusiast.
Severe mental illness, social isolation, and access to weapons were all identified as contributing factors to the shooting by Connecticut state authorities and the Office of the Child Advocate.
Events
Murder of Nancy Lanza
Sometime before 9:30 a.m. EST on December 14, 2012, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy, aged 52, with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle at their Newtown home. Investigators later found her body in her bed with four gunshot wounds to her head. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in his mother's car.
School shooting begins
Shortly after 9:35 a.m., armed with his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and ten magazines with 30 rounds each, Lanza shot his way through a glass panel next to the school's locked front entrance doors. He was wearing black clothing, yellow earplugs, sunglasses, a black boonie hat, fingerless gloves and an olive drab utility vest. Initial reports that he was wearing body armor were incorrect. Some of those present heard the initial shots on the school intercom system, which was being used for morning announcements.
Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were meeting with other faculty members when they heard, but did not recognize the gunshots. Hochsprung, Sherlach, and lead teacher Natalie Hammond went into the hall to determine the source of the sounds and encountered Lanza. A faculty member who was at the meeting said that the three women called out "Shooter, stay put!", which alerted their colleagues of the danger and saved their lives. Diane Day, a school therapist who had been at the faculty meeting with Hochsprung, said that both Hochsprung and Sherlach immediately jumped up from their chairs and ran into the hallway to confront Lanza. Shari Thornberg, an aide, heard gunshots. A teacher hiding in the math lab heard school janitor Rick Thorne yell, "Put the gun down!" Lanza killed both Hochsprung and Sherlach. Hammond was hit first in the leg, and then sustained another gunshot wound. She laid still in the hallway and then, not hearing any more noise, crawled back to the conference room and pressed her body against the door to keep it closed. She was later treated at Danbury Hospital.
A nine-year-old boy said he heard the shooter say "Put your hands up!" and someone else say "Don't shoot!" He also heard many people yelling and many gunshots over the intercom while he, his classmates, and his teacher took refuge in a closet in the gymnasium. One teacher was closing a door further down the hallway, when she was hit in the foot with a bullet that ricocheted. Lanza never entered her classroom.
After killing Hochsprung and Sherlach, Lanza entered the main office but apparently did not see the people hiding there, and returned to the hallway. School nurse Sarah (Sally) Cox, 60, hid under a desk in her office. She later described seeing the door open, and Lanza's boots and legs facing her desk from approximately 20 feet (six meters) away. He remained standing for a few seconds before turning around and leaving. She and the school secretary Barbara Halstead called 911 and hid in a first-aid supply closet for nearly four hours. Janitor Rick Thorne ran through hallways, alerting classrooms.
Classroom shootings
Lanza entered Room 8, a first-grade classroom where Lauren Rousseau, a substitute teacher, had herded her first-grade students to the back of the room, and was trying to hide them in a bathroom, when Lanza forced his way into the classroom. Rousseau, Rachel D'Avino (a behavioral therapist who had been employed for a week at the school to work with a special needs student), and 15 students in Rousseau's class were killed. Fourteen of the children were dead at the scene; one injured child was taken to a hospital for treatment, but was later pronounced dead. Most of the teachers and students were found crowded together in the bathroom. A six-year-old girl, the sole survivor, was found by police in the classroom following the shooting. She hid in a corner of the classroom's bathroom during the shooting. Her family's pastor said she survived by playing dead. When she reached her mother, she said, "Mommy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead." A girl who was hiding in a bathroom along with two teachers told police that she heard a boy in the classroom screaming, "Help me! I don't want to be here!", to which Lanza responded, "Well, you're here," followed by "hammering" sounds.
Lanza also went to Room 10, another first-grade classroom nearby. At this point, there are conflicting reports about the order of events. According to some reports, the classroom's teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto, had concealed some of the students in a closet or bathroom, and some of the other students were hiding under desks. Soto was walking back to the classroom door to lock it when Lanza entered the classroom. Lanza walked to the back of the classroom, saw the children under the desks, and shot them. First-grader Jesse Lewis shouted at his classmates to run for safety, and several of them did. Lewis was looking at Lanza when Lanza fatally shot him. Another account, given by a surviving child's father, said that Soto had moved the children to the back of the classroom, and that they were seated on the floor when Lanza entered. According to this account, neither Lanza nor any of the occupants of the classroom spoke. Lanza stared at the people on the floor, pointed the gun at a boy seated there, but did not fire. The boy ran out of the classroom. The final report into the shooting concluded that the sequence of events in Rooms 8 and 10 was "indeterminate".
A Hartford Courant report said that six of the children who escaped did so when Lanza stopped shooting, either because his weapon jammed or he erred in reloading it. Earlier reports said that, as Lanza entered her classroom, Soto told him that the children were in the auditorium. When several of the children came out of their hiding places and tried to run for safety, Lanza fatally shot them. Soto put herself between her students and the shooter, who then fatally shot her. Anne Marie Murphy, the special education teacher who worked with special-needs students in Soto's classroom, was also shot and killed; she was found covering six-year-old Dylan Hockley, who also died. Soto and four children were found dead in the classroom. Soto was near the north wall of the room with a set of keys nearby. One child was taken to the hospital, but was pronounced dead. Six surviving children from the class and a school bus driver took refuge at a nearby home. According to the official report released by the state's attorney, nine children ran from Soto's classroom, and police found two hiding in a class bathroom. Five of Soto's students were killed.
Survivors' eyewitness accounts
First-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29 years old, hid 15 students in a bathroom and barricaded the door, telling them to be completely quiet to remain safe. It is believed that Lanza bypassed her classroom, which was the first classroom on the left side of the hallway. Following a lockdown drill weeks earlier, Roig had failed to remove a piece of black construction paper covering the small window in her classroom door. Lanza may have assumed that Roig's classroom was empty because the door was closed and the window was covered.
School library staff Yvonne Cech and Maryann Jacob tried to hide 18 children in a part of the library the school used for lockdown in practice drills. When they discovered that one door would not lock, they had the children crawl into a storage room, where Cech barricaded the door with a filing cabinet.
Music teacher Maryrose Kristopik barricaded her fourth-grade class inside an instrument storage closet after hearing gunshots broadcast over the school's public address system. Lanza then entered the classroom and banged on the closet door screaming "Let me in! Let me in!" The class remained completely silent inside the locked closet, and Lanza left the room without gaining entry.
Two third-grade students, chosen as classroom helpers, were walking down the hallway to the office to deliver the morning attendance sheet as the shooting began. Teacher Abbey Clements pulled both children into her classroom, where they hid.
Laura Feinstein, a reading specialist at the school, gathered two students from outside her classroom and hid with them under desks after they heard gunshots. Feinstein called the school office and tried to call 911, but could not connect due to lack of reception on her cell phone. She hid with the children for approximately 40 minutes, at which point law enforcement came to lead them out of the room.
When police interviewed survivors, a teacher recalled hearing Lanza curse several times, as well as telling them to, "Look at me!", "Come over here!", and "Look at them!"