Thoughts and Prayers
If you're not near a television, keep it that way. This is a story where you won't want or need the accompanying footage. The Hartford Courant is reporting this morning:
Multiple people, including children, have been killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School [in Newtown, Connecticut]
The number of dead is unclear, but there are at least 20 shooting victims. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources said.
One entire classrom is unaccounted for outside the school, sources said.
A person believed to be a shooter is dead. Earlier reports of a second shooter are unconfirmed.
ABC News reported through federal, local officials that more than a dozen people, including children, were shot and killed.
Some reports have the number of dead as high as 27. As per usual in these cases, it'll likely be a while until the details become clear. And in the interim, there will be no shortage of media types beclowning themselves with irresponsible speculation.
I hope that, for a few days at least, we can resist the temptation to shoehorn this in to some broader social or political narrative. Such impulses miss the real point: a little over a week before Christmas, there are parents who forever lost the opportunity to have their children come home because they sent them off to elementary school this morning.
The heart breaks.
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Nov '11
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
A terrible moment for all the victims involved and ourselves as witnesses as well.
Hope and prayers for all those affected, and that those wounded recover as fully and swiftly as possible.
Oct '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Elementary school. Very frightening.
Jun '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Troy, Troy, Troy, my friend... you really need to check the Member Feed more often.
Dec '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Heartbreaking indeed. Every parent's nightmare. God bless 'em and hold them close.
Mar '11
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
I join your prayer for the innocent, the suffering, and grieving.
For the one who inflicted this tragedy, I think Psalm 11 about sums it up:
Mar '11
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Sad....just sad.
Dec '11
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
My wife has a good heart and is crying over all the new broken families with stacks of Christmas presents for kids that aren't there anymore. Its shattering my normally fairly rigid self control (internet flame wars excepted).
This is truly awful.
Jun '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Fox News Channel says 2nd shooter in custody. Take it with as many grains of salt as you see fit.
Apr '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Hopefully, it's the person who shot the child killer.
Jul '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Newtown, CT is this nice, safe, New England towns. A friend of mine has kids in that school (who are safe thank the good lord) but all of us here in Connecticut are so shocked, school is supposed to be a safe place and especially in a place like Newtown. I will be hugging my kids tight tonight
and praying for the parents and families who lost loved ones this morning.
May '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
I have an 8-year-old in the third grade three blocks away. I have a decision to make about talking to him about this incident. Ignorance is not bliss here. He should know what he needs to do in case some nutjob decides to play copycat.
That said, I have been watching CBS News and Bob Orr and John Miller are doing a yoman's job in working the phones and reporting. Norah O'Donnell, on the other hand, is an idiot. She has made colorful use of language that makes no sense, i.e. she used the term "execution-style" without apparently thinking about what that means.
She asked the stupidest question that any "reporter" has in the tool box, "How did you feel...."
Jun '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
EJHill: I have an 8-year-old in the third grade three blocks away. I have a decision to make about talking to him about this incident. Ignorance is not bliss here. He should know what he needs to do in case some nutjob decides to play copycat.
That said, I have been watching CBS News and Bob Orr and John Miller are doing a yoman's job in working the phones and reporting. Norah O'Donnell, on the other hand, is an idiot. She has made colorful use of language that makes no sense, i.e. she used the term "execution-style" without apparently thinking about what that means.
She asked the stupidest question that any "reporter" has in the tool box, "How did you feel...." · 0 minutes ago
Why would you watch CBS? :p
Jan '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
My heart is broken for those families, and my stomach is sick at the sight of such evil. Prayers for those families and that community.
Aug '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Horrors visited upon innocent children have always been one of the great tragedies of humankind. Those who perpetrate them deserve our greatest condemnation as a society.
Sep '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Agreed.
May '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Do you don't have to.
Actually, I started to watch local Connecticut television (stream) but they cut to CBS because Bob Orr in DC was getting more information from the Feds than the locals were getting.
And when I turned on the TV, neither the ABC or NBC affiliates in my area were providing any coverage.
Aug '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
I vividly remember watching the news in my 5th grade classroom on April 20, 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates at Columbine High School, only a little over an hour away from my own school. My heart goes out to all of the kids in the area. As hard as it is to understand tragedies like this as an adult, it is immeasurably harder to understand as a child.
Jun '12
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
EJHill
Do you don't have to.
Actually, I started to watch local Connecticut television (stream) but they cut to CBS because Bob Orr in DC was getting more information from the Feds than the locals were getting.
And when I turned on the TV, neither the ABC or NBC affiliates in my area were providing any coverage. · 6 minutes ago
There's always Fox News Channel... unless you're a cable-less Neanderthal.
May '10
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Actually, in situations like this there is little difference.
Mar '11
Re: Thoughts and Prayers
Just read where the shooter was a father, 20 year's old. Now, if this is an elementary school, and we assume that his kid was the youngest possible, a Kindergartner, that puts him at about 5. So... a dad at 15?