Sandy Hook parents, survivors reliving their own nightmares in wake of deadly Texas school shooting
Sandy Hook #SandyHook
Nearly 10 years ago, Mary Ann Jacob huddled in a closet in Sandy Hook Elementary School with 18 terror-stricken children as a gunman massacred 20 of their classmates and six educators in nearby classrooms.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting remains the deadliest school shooting in American history but is now trailed closely by the slaughter of at least 19 children and two educators at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, where the death toll may still climb. Children are still being identified, some only by their DNA after becoming unrecognizable by the shooting.
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When Jacob heard the news of what had happened in Texas, she said she was thrust straight back into the worst moments of her life. Moments when she — an elementary school library clerk in small-town Connecticut — was forced to protect scared, shaking students from the rapid fire of an automatic rifle wielded by a 20-year-old.
“Yesterday I was right back in that closet,” she said. “Remembering the fear and horror we experienced trying to be brave for the kids we were with, while we were more frightened than we’ve ever been in our lives.”
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Jacob joined legislators, shooting survivors and parents of children killed by guns on the steps of the state capitol in Hartford on Wednesday, all sharing an exhaustive frustration that 10 years after the Sandy Hook shooting, lawmakers are still fighting for stricter federal gun laws like universal background checks.
“The 20 deaths here in Connecticut of those children and the six colleagues of mine should have been enough,” she said.
Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan Hockley died in his teacher Anne Marie Murphy’s arms in Sandy Hook, said that the news from Texas forced her to remember the events of Dec. 14, 2012, all over again.
“Whenever there is a mass shooting, I am retraumatized. I relive the murder of my beautiful butterfly Dylan, his classmates and educators. The sadness and anger are crushing,” she said.
This week, Hockley said she was taken right back to the moment she learned her son had been killed in his elementary school. She was at the firehouse in Sandy Hook, where hoards of parents were waiting to hear whether their child was alive or dead. As parents were reunited with their children, the crowd dwindled down to only those who would receive the worst news of their lives: Their child was among the 20.
“I saw on the news that families were gathering outside [in Texas], not knowing if their children were alive or dead,” said Hockley of the heartbreaking images broadcast from Texas Tuesday night. “It brought me right back to the firehouse almost 10 years ago, where I felt relief at finding my older son, Jake — but where my world was ripped apart learning that my baby boy, Dylan, was never coming home,” she said.
The Hockley’s had moved to Sandy Hook from England, to the same street as the mother of shooter Adam Lanza — whom Lanza also killed — just two years before the massacre. Dylan, the family said, thrived in their new home. He was learning to read, played tag at the bus stop with his neighbors each morning, loved his teacher and liked to look at the moon, according to his obituary.
Dylan’s teacher, Murphy, also died that day as she shielded her students from a downpour of bullets.
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As Jacob was reliving her harrowing moments in the closet, and Hockley was reliving her heartbreak at the firehouse, Becky Kowalski was hearing the news from her sister: Another shooting, another elementary school.
Kowalski’s 6-year-old son Chase Kowalski, a budding triathlete, was one of the first-graders who died in Sandy Hook. The shooting in Texas ripped the wound of Chase’s murder back open.
“Ten years really puts a big scab on it … and things like this, the scab gets pulled off again,” Kowalski said Tuesday night. “All I can say is that my heart goes out to these people. I know exactly how they feel.”
Kowalski said she can’t watch TV or read the news too closely these days, so she spared herself the details of what happened inside Robb Elementary School.
“I didn’t look any further into it because a lot of times I just can’t,” she said. “I have to shut it out. It’s painful.”
After her son’s death, Kowalski started a foundation called the CMAK Foundation, which raises money for kids’ triathlon programs. This October, she’ll compete in her first Ironman triathlon, right around what would have been Chase’s 17th birthday.
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“Hopefully these families will see some sort of light to help them in their grief and be able to do something to honor their kids,” Kowalski said. “I have to say, it’s the thing that’s kept us going and changed our lives.”
The parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook have channeled their grief in different ways. Many have become advocates for gun control or started nonprofits like Hockley did with the Newtown-based national nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise, which she co-founded with Mark Barden.
Hockley and Barden were two of the parents who had their worst fears confirmed at that firehouse a decade ago. They are now dedicated to trying to keep other parents from experiencing the same pain.
Daniel Barden, 7, a red-haired boy with a big smile that showed his missing front teeth in his school photo, was also killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
Hockley and Barden said that they were grieving with the families in Uvalde who were living the same nightmare that they, too, still live in — they join the hoards of American parents who find themselves mourning young children slaughtered in school.
“Nineteen children will never come home from school. We know firsthand the unspeakable pain and darkness that descended on Uvalde. Nearly 10 years ago, our sons, Dylan and Daniel, went to school and never came home,” the parents said.
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The co-CEOs of the nonprofit urged parents everywhere to think about what the Uvalde parents were feeling this week as they stepped out on what Hockley said “will be a very long path of grief and healing.”
“For everyone else waking up today — take a moment as you send your child to school and imagine what the Uvalde community is experiencing,” Hockley and Barden said in a joint statement. “Take your heartache, your fear, your anger and sadness, and channel them into action. We must take action today and every day until this epidemic of violence ends.”
The Sandy Hook Promise nonprofit is aimed toward ending school shootings, empowering children to “know the signs” and creating a culture of change that prevents violence against children.
“I know the unspeakable pain these families are experiencing right now, and my heart aches for them. I’m horrified and furious that nearly a decade after my devastation, more parents are going through similar devastation as victims of gun violence,” she said.
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Hockley said that even 10 years later, not a day goes by that she doesn’t kiss Dylan’s bright blue urn engraved with his name. The “excruciating pain” of his death, she said, is permanent.
“Now is the time to take bold action. As a country, how much longer can we stand by while innocent children continue to be killed?” she and Barden asked.
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Connecticut legislators, who have been pushing to strengthen gun laws for a decade or longer now, echoed the same questions on the senate floor Tuesday night.
In an emotional plea to his colleagues mere hours after the shooting, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he vividly remembers the moments he spent standing in a Sandy Hook firehouse with parents who, one after the other, heard the news they were dreading: that their children would not be coming home.
He urged his colleagues, including some Republican senators he criticized for being “in the grip” of the NRA, to think about those parents, and the parents in Uvalde, as they went home that night to their own families.
He said there were no words that could encompass their “bottomless grief.”
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“That pain will be with them, a hole in their hearts, a place at their tables, a room in their houses that will never be filled again. And hugs that they will never feel, cheeks that they will never kiss,” he said.
In Hartford on Wednesday, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz praised Connecticut for being a leader in state-level gun laws, propelled by the tragedy in the Sandy Hook, but urged Congress to follow Connecticut’s lead by passing federal legislation that would help prevent more mass shootings.
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She said she would not forget who the laws were written for: Charlotte, Daniel, Rachel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana Grace, Dylan, Dawn, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Anne Marie, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Lauren, Mary, Victoria, Benjamin and Allison.
“We will not forget their names. We will not let those beautiful people be forgotten and we will not wait another day,” she said.
To federal lawmaker, she said: “Just do your job, it’s a matter of life and death.”
Courant reporter Lori Riley contributed to this report.