NEWTOWN, Connecticut (AP) — The U.S. town shattered by last week’s school shooting prepared today for its first two funerals, including the one for the youngest victim, while officials weren’t sure whether the school itself would ever reopen. Nervous students and teachers across the country returned to classrooms under tighter security.
Further details on just what happened during Friday’s shooting were “too difficult to discuss,” state police Lt. Paul Vance told reporters today.
The first funerals were planned for six-year-old Jack Pinto and Noah Pozner, who had his birthday two weeks ago. They would be buried a day after the small community of Newtown, already stripping itself of many Christmas decorations, came together for a vigil where President Barack Obama said he will use “whatever power” he has to prevent similar massacres.
“What choice do we have?” he said. “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”
Investigators have offered no motive for the shooting, and the Connecticut community struggled to comprehend what drove 20-year-old Adam Lanza to shoot to death his mother at home in bed Friday morning, drive her car to the school and unleash gunfire on six adults and 20 children who were six and seven years old.
All the victims at the school apparently were shot more than once, and some of them were shot at close range, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver has said. He said the ammunition was the type designed to break up inside a victim’s body and inflict the maximum amount of damage.
