The heroic teachers
The Sandy Hook shootings are arguably the saddest I can recall. All mass shootings are tragic, but to mow down six and seven year olds is a type of evil that is thankfully rare.
Most humans have a deeply protective instinct when it comes to kids. This was seen by the actions of the teachers at Sandy Hook, as AP reports:
When Adam Lanza stormed into Victoria Soto’s classroom, he was armed with a rifle and two semi-automatic pistols with which he had already killed 20 small children. She had only her courage, and her instinct to protect her class.
Soto, 27, was alone. A friend, posting on her Tumblr account, said: “When the shooting started Vicki hid her kids in closets and when the gunman came into her room she [said] the class was in gym.”
That lie saved their lives, but it didn’t save hers.
Lanza shot her dead and then, frustrated, turned the gun on himself.
Her cousin Jim Wiltsie told ABC News: “I’m just proud that Vicki had the instincts to protect her kids from harm. It brings peace to know that Vicki was doing what she loved, protecting the children, and in our eyes she’s a hero.”
She is indeed. That is inspiring quick thinking and courage.
It starts with the principal, Dawn Hochsprung, who had the presence of mind to turn on the school intercom, broadcasting screaming and gunshots into every classroom, so that others had to time to take cover.
“That saved a lot of people,” said teacher Theodore Varga, who survived the massacre.
Hochsprung was in a meeting with a parent and senior staff when Lanza began shooting nearby. At the sound of gunshots and screaming, some in her office dived for cover, but Hochsprung and the school’s psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 56, ran out to confront Lanza, shouting back to the others to lock the door. They were both shot dead, Hochsprung as she lunged at the killer.
Again I am awe struck at the courage of confronting an armed killer.
Another teacher used her body to hold the door shut, and was shot in the leg and arm through the door.
Music teacher Maryrose Kristopik kept 20 children safe by barricading them into a closet. Even when the gunman battered on the door screaming, “Let me in! Let me in!” she kept her nerve and blocked the door with her body.
As I said, almost all of us have this wonderful instinct to protect children. Few are ever faced with the test of having to risk their own lives to help save them. The death toll may have reached 60+ if it were not for those teachers.