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Home / World

Sandy Hook Elementary School evacuated after threat on sixth anniversary of massacre

By News Corp Australia Network
Other·
14 Dec, 2018 08:23 PM4 mins to read

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Sandy Hook Elementary School evacuated after threat on sixth anniversary of massacre. Photo / AP

Sandy Hook Elementary School evacuated after threat on sixth anniversary of massacre. Photo / AP

Students at Sandy Hook Elementary School were evacuated this morning after a threat, on the sixth anniversary of the horrific mass shooting that shocked the world and left 20 children dead.

Newtown police said the threat was made at about 9am (local time) as students were just beginning their Friday. They immediately evacuated the school.

Lieutenant Aaron Bahamonde told NBC Connecticutt here's a heightened level of anxiety in town on the anniversary and the school superintendent decided to cancel all remaining classes for the day, reports news.com.au.

It's unclear whether the threat was related to the bomb threats made nationwide on Thursday.

Newtown Action Alliance, an anti-gun grassroots group formed after the tragic shootings, has urged people to keep Sandy Hook in their thoughts today.

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"Please stand with our community as we attempt to survive another tragic anniversary."

Mark Knight cartoon of the Statue of liberty cradling a child after the Sandy Hook massacre. Photo / Supplied
Mark Knight cartoon of the Statue of liberty cradling a child after the Sandy Hook massacre. Photo / Supplied

The Sandy Hook massacre shocked the world six years ago, when on December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members.

Before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home.

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As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza fatally shot himself.

The incident was the deadliest mass shooting at either a high school or primary school in US history and the fourth-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in US history.

SHOOTER DESCRIBED 'SCORN FOR HUMANITY'

The school's evacuation comes in the same week that documents from the investigation into the massacre were released, which described the gunman's anger and scorn for other people, and deep social isolation in the years leading up to the shooting.

The documents that a court ordered Connecticut State Police to release include several writings by Lanza.

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Lanza wrote in what appears to be an online communication with a fellow gamer: "I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity," the Hartford Courant reported.

"I have been desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life."

The criminal investigation ended a year after the massacre without determining a motive. Thousands of pages of documents were released at the time, but in a lawsuit brought by the Courant, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in October that personal belongings of the shooter that had been withheld, including journals, also had to be made public because they were not exempt from open record laws.

Adam Lanza killed 26 people when he opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Photo / AP
Adam Lanza killed 26 people when he opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Photo / AP

A report by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate said Lanza's severe and deteriorating mental health problems, his preoccupation with violence and access to his mother's weapons "proved a recipe for mass murder."

From the 10th grade, Lanza's mother kept him at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of firearms and spent long hours playing violent video games.

His medical and school records included references to diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.

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The newly released documents were seized by authorities during a search of Lanza's home. They include writings that had been described or summarised by previous investigative reports such as the "Big Book Of Granny" — a book describing violence against children that he wrote with another boy in the fifth grade, and a spreadsheet listing mass killings dating back to 1786.

On one handwritten list titled "Problems", Lanza details a range of grievances including lights that are too bright and his hair touching his brother's towel.

"I am unable to distinguish between my problems because I have too many," Lanza wrote.

In other writings, he rages against "fat people" doctors who touched him during physical examinations as a child and writes about paedophilia as a form of love.

In the document where he described his scorn for other people, he also indicated a desire for some form of companionship.

"Most of my social contact was through those players," he wrote to the other gamer.

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"All of them are typical detestable human beings, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me. You were a respite from that."

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