Bearing flowers and soft toys, grief-stricken Newtown residents paid respect Saturday outside the school where 20 children and six adults died in one of the worst mass killings in US history.
Neighbors from all over Connecticut also flocked to this affluent community 90 minutes’ drive from New York to make the grim, solemn pilgrimage by foot up gently-sloping Riverside Road to Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Reaching the top, they placed red, yellow and white flowers, and cuddly light brown teddy bears, at the base of the school’s post-mounted shingle sign that remained festively adorned with a green Christmas wreath.
“Sandy Hook Elementary School,” the quintessentially New England-style sign read. “Visitors welcome.”
Some of the younger mourners wore dark-blue Newtown letter jackets in a show of civic pride in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
From time to time, small convoys of police vehicles entered or left the school grounds with sirens wailing. Often, civilians — perhaps next of kin — could be seen grim-faced in the rear seats.
In the distance, a helicopter flew.
The school building itself, several hundred yards (meters) off the main road and down an incline, could not be seen for a thicket of trees.
Dozens of television news crews from as far afield as China and Switzerland canvassed interviews, looking for someone who might known anything about Adam Lanza, 20, the reputed shooter.
Nicholas Crudo did, but only up to a point.
“When I saw his picture, I knew I’d seen him before,” said the 18-year-old Fordham University science major, who attended Sandy Hook for two years before advancing to the local high school.
But Crudo never knew Lanza personally, leaving him at a loss to explain why anyone would choose to target young children at “an amazing school” where “all the teachers are great.”
“You never expect this to happen in your own town, especially a town as peaceful and under-the-radar as Newtown,” said the teenager, whose family of five moved from Toronto a decade ago.
Another local inhabitant, Alexander Glinski, came to light a candle in memory of the slain son of close friends who had sent him a text message the night before that simply read: “Our son is not with us anymore.”
Glinski declined to identify the “little angel” or the family, who he planned to visit on Sunday. “They can’t talk right now,” he explained to reporters. “They haven’t seen the boy yet.”
Clergymen were out in force as well, from small local churches to Evangelicals affiliated with preacher Billy Graham, but none expressed outrage like Reverend Henry Brown from Hartford, Connecticut’s main city.
“I hate to say this, but this isn’t going to be the last time,” said Brown, a member of Mothers United Against Violence who questioned whether America’s elected politicians have the courage to enact tougher gun laws.
“It’s all right in America for everyone to have a gun — but if it’s alright for everyone to have a gun, then why are we here today?” he asked. “Something is wrong with that picture… People don’t need guns.”
With flowers and toys, Newtown grieves its slain young
