Lanza shot children multiple times with semiautomatic

Connecticut medical examiners reveal horrifying details

Published December 16, 2012 2:16PM (EST)

Some 6 and 7-year-old victims of the Newtown school shooting were shot up to 11 times at close range with a semiautomatic rifle, according to Connecticut's chief medical examiner. The 20 children and 6 adults killed were all shot more than once.

According to the New York Times, the state’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said the victims had bullet wounds "all over, all over."

“This is probably the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen,” Carver, who is 60 and has been Connecticut’s chief medical examiner since 1989, told reporters.

As law enforcement officials piece together details of the unthinkable events inside Sandy Hook elementary school, stories of immense bravery have emerged. Via the AP:

After gunman Adam Lanza broke through the school door, gun blazing, school psychologist Mary Sherlach and principal Dawn Hochsprung ran toward him, Robinson said. Hochsprung died while lunging at the gunman, officials said...

Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher, reportedly hid some students in a bathroom or closet and died trying to shield them from bullets, a cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC News. Those who knew Soto said they weren't surprised...

Teacher Theodore Varga said that as gunfire echoed through the school, a custodian ran around, warning people. He appears to have survived; all the adults killed were women...

Clerk Maryann Jacob was working with a group of 18 fourth-graders in the library when the shooting broke out. She herded the children into a classroom in the library, but then realized the door wouldn't lock.

They crawled across the room into a storage space, locked the door and barricaded it with a filing cabinet. There happened to be materials for coloring, she said, "so we set them up with paper and crayons."

Meanwhile, as the "hows" of the massacre become clear, the "whys" continue to elude investigators, the Newtown community and a nation in shock.


By Natasha Lennard

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

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