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(Reuters) - A heavily armed gunman opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, killing 26 people, including 20 children, police said, in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The gunman - who according to a media report carried four weapons and wore a bullet-proof vest - was dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, state police Lieutenant Paul Vance told a news conference.

Vance said authorities found 18 children and seven adults, including the gunman, dead at the school, and two children were pronounced dead later at a hospital. Another adult was found dead at a related crime scene in Newtown, he said, bringing the toll to 28.

The New York Times reported that the gunman, believed to be in his 20s, walked into a classroom where his mother was a teacher, shot his mother and then 18 students in the room before shooting five other adults and killing himself.

Sad , and so near Christmas

The New York Times reported that the gunman walked into a classroom where his mother was a teacher, shot his mother and then 20 students, most in the same classroom, b e fore shooting five other adults and killing himself. One other person was shot at the school and survived, the Times said

Yesterday I listed on CNN Radio to one emotional mother talk about how her six year old son survived the terrible shooting tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She had always told him if someone comes into the school with a gun he should run away.

This advice probably saved her son's life. The shooter came into the classroom, standing at the door and shot this child's teacher. The six year old, rather than hiding in the classroom or just staring in shock, had the presence of mind to follow his mother's advice and ran for the door, running past the shooter still standing there. He and a couple of his buddies ran down the hall and out of the school where a Good Samaritan woman picked them up and took them to the town's police station.


This is exactly what needs to happen. Tell anyone, children, teens, adults that the one key survival technique in a shooting incident is to run away, even if it means running past the shooter. Your chances go way up by doing this. I say that "Repetition is the Mother of Remembering." It is not enough to give this message just once. It has to be repeated again and again. A couple of months from now repeat the message. I remember my father always saying, "Safety First" it was drilled into him and he drilled it into me.

Tell anyone, children, teens, adults that the one key survival technique in a shooting incident is to run away, even if it means running past the shooter.

This is a cycle; it is not germane to any one generation.

It begins at some time in the family and becomes learned; carried on sometimes generation to generation not by deliberation or design, but this is just what was learned from watching, seeing and being victim to.

The end result is a weakness of the mind; an inability to deal with the daily stressors of life in a humane and civil way. The learned response of anger and violence becomes the way to solve the problem.

Hence it is a societal issue. One where we fail as a people. We lose care and respect for one another and those closest to us. More over we have no respect in ourselves or our lives and begin to believe that life is cheap, worth nothing.

Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, state medical examiner, said at a briefing Saturday that he personally examined the bodies of seven first-graders, each dressed in “cute kids’ stuff,” and each of whom had been shot between three and 11 times.

While his peers slung backpacks over their shoulder, Lanza carried a dark briefcase through his high school halls, a row of pens neatly lined up in the pocket of his button-down shirt. His oddly formal outfit varied so little, students had wondered if he wore the same shirt every day.

People knew him as smart, an honor roll regular, a computer whiz who loved video games. One classmate described him as a genius. But they also knew he was so reclusive and painfully awkward that even well-meaning students struggled to interact with him.