Newtown begins to bury little victims of rampage

LITTLE ROCK — The town of Newtown, Conn., started burying the first young victims of last week’s slaughter at an elementary school Monday, laying them to rest as investigators continued to search for clues about what motivated the gunman.

Jack Pinto was only 6, but as a family friend said in a eulogy, he had made his presence in the world well known.

“From the moment Jack arrived in this world, he commanded all the attention in a room,” the friend, Mary Radatovich, said during the service in Newtown. “Who could ignore that beautiful energy, the sparkle in his eye, or that spirit that clearly said, ‘I am here and I am something special’?”

“We cannot but feel the pain of losing him, but we will never forget the joy of loving him.”

After Jack’s funeral had ended, a friend, Nolan Krieger, 8, walked out of the funeral home rubbing his eyes.

“I used to do everything with him,” Nolan said of Jack. “We liked to wrestle. We played Wii. We just played all the time. I can’t believe I’m never going to see him again.”

In another town about the same time, words were also used to paint a picture of another 6-year-old boy, Noah Pozner, who had been excited about a birthday party he had been invited to, which would have been held the day after he died inside the school.

“Noah was a little kid,” Alexis Haller, Noah’s uncle, said in a eulogy. “He loved animals, video games and Mario Brothers. He was already a very good reader, and had just bought a Ninjago book at a book fair that he was really excited about reading.

“Noah loved his family dearly, especially his mom, his dad, his big sisters Danielle and Sophia, his big brother Michael, and his dear twin Arielle,” Haller continued. “He called Arielle his best friend, and she was - and always had been.”

The funerals came on a day when students across the country returned to schools where security had been increased and where counselors were dispatched to help students and teachers cope with the fallout from the massacre.

Little Rock School District Superintendent Morris Holmes offered assurances to parents there that school principals and other staff members responsible for student safety and security in the district were on heightened alert.

In an automated phone call Sunday that went to the parents of the district’s 25,000 students, a district spokesman reported that principals had been directed to meet with their administrative teams and security staff members before the start of classes Monday to reinforce existing school safety requirements.

A total of 17 Little Rock police officers are assigned to district schools, and 1,700 cameras are installed, operating and monitored in the schools. There are more than 120 district-employed security officers plus 20 substitutes.

“Be assured ... the district will be fully engaged with administrators and staff doing all in our power to keep school safe for children, teachers, staff and parents,” the automated phone message said.

Similar steps were being taken around the nation Monday.

At least three schools were on alert in Ohio after threatening comments were made on Facebook and Twitter. In suburban Philadelphia, officers rushed to a high school after security officers mistook a student’s umbrella for a gun. In Tampa, Fla., the Hillsborough County sheriff’s office questioned students after a bullet was found on a school bus.

And in Ridgefield, Conn., swarms of parents picked up their children and police were dispatched to every school after a report of a suspicious person at a nearby train station.

One school district in western Pennsylvania went so far as to get a court order allowing armed officers in each of its schools on Monday. The board had recently voted to let officers carry guns but decided to expedite the process after Friday’s shooting. The court order affected the Butler Area School District and the South Butler County School District, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Many schools held a moment of silence and flew flags at half-staff. Teachers and administrators tried to handle the psychological toll, many opting for routine rather than a discussion about the shooting.

Kit Bell, 65, a second-grade teacher at Sunnyside Elementary School in San Francisco, said she didn’t talk to her students about the shooting, but that teachers were discussing it among themselves and questioning safety procedures.

“You’re responsible for these children,” she said. “It crosses your mind where it didn’t cross your mind before. It’s stressful. It’s painful. It’s sad.”

SEARCHING FOR CLUES

Investigators on Monday offered few clues about what motivated the gunman in Friday’s slaying. They said it could take months to re-create a full account of the events preceding and during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has been sealed off as a crime scene.

The Connecticut State Police on Sunday officially confirmed the identity of the killer as Adam Lanza, 20, saying he shot himself with a handgun after taking the lives of 26 other people, 20 of them first-grade students, at the school, using an assault rifle. Before going on this rampage, Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, 52, in the house they shared not far from the school, law enforcement officials said.

In briefings Monday, Lt. J. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the state police, said that investigators needed to talk to many witnesses, including two adults who were wounded during the shooting at the school, and to analyze every round of ammunition and every detail of the weapons. But the authorities have been reluctant to provide details about the types of evidence they have retrieved from the crime scenes.

A law enforcement official said investigators recovered a computer from Lanza’s house, but it is so damaged that they are not optimistic about getting any information from it. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has more expertise in computer forensics than Connecticut’s state forensic laboratory, has been part of the effort to recover data from the computer, the official said.

Vance again emphasized that it would be a long process to deliver the answers that many longed to hear about the motive, but he said there was “no connection” between Adam Lanza and the school, apparently countering earlier reports that Lanza had attended classes there.

Vance said for now, the plan was to let normality return to schools as soon as possible, though students at Sandy Hookwill attend school at another building in a nearby community.

‘NO WORDS’

An emotional Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy recalled Monday how and why he decided to be the one to tell the families of the shooting victims that their loved ones were dead.

Malloy said at a news conference at the state Capitol that he sensed a “reluctance” by officials to tell the anxious group waiting for news at the Sandy Hook firehouse “that the person they were waiting for was not going to return.”

“There really are no words to describe what it is like to see these parents,” Malloy said.

After attending Noah’s funeral earlier, the governor said, “You see little coffins and your heart has to ache.”

The governor also waded into a discussion about gun laws, saying that while Connecticut has some of the toughest, more could still be done both in terms of legislation and in addressing mental-health policies.

Malloy said that he supported the “opportunity to hunt” and the “strictest definition of the Second Amendment,” but that the number of assault weapons in circulation was “way out of control” and “not something that I support.”

Authorities said most of the shots were fired from a .223 Bushmaster M4 semiautomatic carbine, a military-style assault weapon. Lanza also was carrying two semiautomatic pistols,a 10mm Glock and a 9mm Sig Sauer. A shotgun was found in the car.

The guns were legally acquired and registered by Nancy Lanza, who had sometimes taken her son to shooting ranges, according to law enforcement officials and her friends.

AS MUCH AS HE NEEDED

Other details of the Lanzas’ lives began to emerge Monday.

When Adam Lanza’s parents divorced in 2009, the settlement left his mother with a comfortable income and the comfort of knowing that the then-17-year old boy would have his education paid for and his medical insurance covered.

In working through the terms of their divorce, Nancy and Peter Lanza spent considerable time talking about how to provide for their son’s well-being, said Paula Levy, a mediator who worked with the couple.

During their meetings, the couple mentioned that Adam Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism-like disorder, Levy said. But the Lanzas were in complete agreement on how to address Adam’s needs and said little about the details of his condition, Levy said.

“The only two things I remember them saying is that she really didn’t like to leave him alone, and I know they went out of their way to accommodate him,” said Levy, who recalled the couple as very respectful of each other and equally concerned about their son’s needs.

“They worked together about it,” Levy said. “The mom, Nancy, pretty much said she was going to take care of him [Adam] and be there as much as he needed her, even long term.” Information for this article was contributed by Christine Hauser, Elizabeth Maker, J. David Goodman, Michael S. Schmidt, Randy Leonard and N.R. Kleinÿ eld of The New York Times; by Christine Armario, Joe Mandak, Michelle Nealy, Carolyn Thompson, Samantha Critchell, Holly Ramer, Terence Chea, Susan Haigh, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Geller of The Associated Press; and by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.