- Twenty children and six staff members were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.
- It was the deadliest mass shooting at an elementary school in US history.
- The 20-year-old gunman also killed his mother that day and shot himself after the massacre.
On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot 26 people, including 20 children, after also killing his mother in their home.
News of the massacre reverberated across the country and elicited a tearful reaction from then-President Barack Obama, who described it as the worst day of his presidency.
Sen. Chris Murphy, who had previously been a representative for the district that included Newtown, was among those present when the families of the victims learned about the fates of their loved ones.
“‘I’m so, so sad today,” he tweeted on the sixth anniversary in 2018. “Sad for the searing loss, that hurts like hell every Dec 14th for those parents, my friends. And sad that I sent my youngest off to 1st grade this morning, and that I work with people who care more about politics than making sure he comes home safe.”
In the decade that has passed since that day, many of the parents and families launched foundations in their children’s names to help others, and become advocates for gun control.
And in early August, conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to two parents whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre in a defamation trial after he spent years calling the shooting a “hoax” and the victims “crisis actors.” Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of six-year-old victim Jesse Lewis, were also awarded $4.1 million in compensatory damages in the defamation trial against Jones.
Here are all 27 people killed in the deadliest elementary school shooting in US history.
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