Newtown residents recall horrors of Sandy Hook following Texas shooting: ‘It just brings back the tortures of that day’

Watching over the news as a phalanx of police, medics and other first responders descended on a Texas elementary school where 21 people shot and killed on Tuesday, Monsignor Robert Weiss of Newtown’s St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church recalled how his own community seemed “violated” following a similarly-devastating attack that killed nine of his parishioners at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“It just brings back the tortures of that day,” Weiss said during a phone call Tuesday. “Those images are still very, very vivid in my mind as I walked down there to get to the school, it was just an amazing experience.”

In Newtown, the site of the 2012 attack that killed 20 children and six adults, residents were reeling Tuesday over the similarities between the two shootings and the age of the victims — while also expressing frustration that little has been done over the last decade to prevent the tragedy from recurring.

Nicole Hockley, mother of six-year-old Sandy Hook victim Dylan Hockley, appeared on MSNBC Tuesday night angered over what she said was a lack of action by Congress to pass meaningful gun control laws in the wake of numerous school shootings.

“This is a generation, when I think about Sandy Hook, 10 years ago these are kids now that, this is all they’ve known their entire life are school shootings and the psychological trauma and the impact of all that,” said Hockley, co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, an organization that aims to prevent gun violence. “They’re the ones that are going to create the change because our Congress isn’t going to do it for them.”

So few years have passed since the attack on Sandy Hook, that many of the students who survived the attack are still attending high school just a few miles away.

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On Tuesday evening, Newtown School Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue said in an email to staff and families that counseling teams will be prepared to offer assistance to students at each of the district’s seven schools, particularly at Newtown High School.

In addition, Rodrigue said she is working with Newtown Police to provide “enhanced police presence” at district schools.

“In Newtown, this news resonates with our students, staff, and families in ways many communities might not understand — and hopefully never will,” Rodrigue said in the email. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the students, families, and staff in the Uvalde school community. We will also be reaching out to the administration there to offer our support at this difficult time.”

Po Murray, the chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance and a neighbor to several families who lost children in the Sandy Hook attack, said on Tuesday that the targeting of another elementary school was particularly jarring to residents in Newtown.

“Obviously, we’re all devastated by what happened and the similarity between that shooting and the Sandy Hook shooting breaks our heart because we know exactly what they’re going through right now,” Murray said.

In another striking similarity between the two attacks, police reported Tuesday that the suspect in the Texas shooting was believed to have shot his grandmother prior to the attack. Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook shooting, shot and killed his mother on the morning of the attack.

Murray noted that the shooting deaths are up across the country in recent years, and that her organization has called on Congress to pass legislation requiring safer storage of firearms, as well on President Joe Biden to create a national office on gun violence prevention.

“Other nations have figured it out and we can too if we had elected leaders who would distance themselves from the [National Rifle Association], the [National Shooting Sports Foundation] and the gun industry and start passing common sense gun laws that the majority of Americans already support,” Murray said.

Weiss, the local monsignor, also questioned the lack of national action on gun control that political leaders across Connecticut vowed to address on Tuesday.

“If we haven’t been able to control gun violence after how many school shootings, when is it ever going to happen?” Weiss said. “How do you control it, how do you stop these things from happening?”

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, however, Weiss said that residents of Uvalde, the small city where the shooting occurred, should focus on the well-being of their children and making sure that they are given the ability to ask questions and have their feelings heard.

“I’m sure the country, as they did here, there will be an outpouring of affection and an outpouring of things to get them through this, but right now it’s time for those people to get behind their doors of their own home and just be together, keep their children feeling safe and certainly turning to the Lord,” Weiss said. “This is evil, this is evil in our face when something like this happens.”