Barack
Obama said in an emotional White House address that the nation has to
come together and take meaningful action after a shooting at a school in
Connecticut in which 27 people, including 20 children, are reported to
have been killed.“Our hearts are broken today,” he said.
He said the children killed in the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were aged between five and 10 years old.
He said the nation had been “through this too many times” and has to come together to take meaningful action, “regardless of the politics”.
Mr Obama began his address without a greeting, and ended with words of Scripture, walking away in silence.
During his message Mr Obama had to pause again to gather his words.
“They had their entire lives ahead of them – birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own,” he said.
A law enforcement official said the school shooting suspect, named as 24-year-old Adam Lanza, died from a selfinflicted gunshot wound and that his younger brother Ryan was being held for questioning as a possible second gunman.
He said the men’s mother, Nancy Lanza, worked at the school as a teacher and was presumed dead.
Robert Licata said his sixyear-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.
“That’s when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door,” he said. “He was very brave. He waited for his friends.”
Mr Licata said the gunman did not say a word.
The law enforcement official also said Adam Lanza’s girl-friend and another friend were missing in New Jersey.
According to the official, the suspect drove to the school in his mother’s car.
Three guns were found – a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols, and a .223-calibre rifle. The rifle was recovered from the back of a car at the school, and the two pistols were recovered from inside the school.
State police said only students and school staff were killed, but they refused to say how many people were dead. Police said the scene was secure.
Photos from the scene showed students, some of them crying, being escorted by adults through a car park in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders.
Children told their parents they had heard bangs and, at one point, a scream over the intercom.
The shooting shocked the small, tranquil community in one of the wealthiest counties in the US, about 60 miles north-east of New York City.
The last news items posted before the shooting on the website of the tiny newspaper, The Newtown Bee, lamented cracked headstones at a local cemetery and asked residents to “share 2012 memories”.
Anguished parents came running when they heard news of the shooting.
Stephen Delgiadice said his eight-year-old daughter heard two big bangs, and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.
“It’s alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America,” he said.
Mergim Bajraliu (17) heard gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his nine-year-old sister at the school.
He said his sister, who was not injured, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.
“Everyone was just traumatised,” he said.
Richard Wilford said his seven-year-old son, Richie, said he heard a noise that “sounded like what he described as cans falling”.
The boy told him a teacher went outside to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and got the children to huddle in a corner until police arrived.
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