I'm still struggling with the emotions from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. I used to work in a school for the Deaf and this horror made me wonder what could I have done if such a monster attacked the school? A close friend of mine was murdered by her unstable boyfriend, who then called his sister and forced her to listen as he shot himself.
My stomach is in KNOTS!
Until the Newtown, Connecticut police finish their criminal investigation, NO ONE will know the HOW or WHY this happened. There is evidence that the public does NOT have access to......only the police know at this time and they are still piecing the puzzle together. Until then, we can only speculate.....and the speculations don't have any concrete evidence to base opinions on.
The violence that was committed by this one disturbed person made me think of an incident that occurred several years ago at the school for the Deaf. There was this one student who was constantly out of control. His behavior was so disruptive that he made the cartoon Tasmanian Devil appear cool, calm, and collected. Every single time the school administrators attempted to address each incident with him, his mother would scream lawsuit! One incident sent a teacher to the emergency room because he punched her in the face and ripped her upper lip in two! The student was suspended for the assault and, of course, his mother screamed lawsuit. (All of this was occurring within an elementary to middle school setting.) When it was time to consider transferring to the high school, (where I was working), the file folder of documented incidents was more than an inch thick. Fortunately, the high school was not required to admit all applicants and when his application came across the desk of the Admissions Office, the school administrators said NO because the way the school building and program is structured, it would have been impossible to contain his out of control behaviors. Because I was working as an administrative secretary, I was one of the recipients of the mother's FREQUENT phone calls, screaming in my ear, that if we DARED say NO, SHE was going to SUE US for DISCRIMINATION! I think the only thing that finally stopped her was when the school's lawyer got involved and sent her a letter.
Then there was another high school student, that I encountered during my employment there, who thought it was funny to set things on fire. The first, AND LAST, time he committed arson within the school, he was immediately expelled. The reactions of his parents was to threaten to sue the school if their son was not immediately reinstated as a student!
Two students with out of control behaviors and the parents' behavior was to threaten lawsuits because the school DARED TO SAY NO.
Edit in: Another student was brought to my office because he was spotted with a butcher knife. He freely admitted that he was hunting down another particular student to stab him! He was also immediately expelled for obvious reasons. There is a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY regarding weapons brought to school. His guardian pulled all kinds of stunts and tricks to attempt to force us to reinstate him. At the same time, the expelled student attempted to pay one of his friends to hunt down his target and kill him. The friend, who was approached to do this, immediately reported this to my office and it was turned over to the campus and local police. Did the guardian accept this? Nope. The guardian kept up the pressure to reinstate him....even getting a local politician involved in calling my office to demand reinstatement. Made me wonder what planet they were living on when they were told WHY the expulsion had to stand and they kept persisting in pressuring us to rescind the expulsion.
I just don't understand ANY OF THIS!
Edit in: I recently got the latest edition of People magazine that shows the pictures of the 26 victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Those 20 INNOCENT babies were all BEAUTIFUL! How can anyone claim that this massacre was only a hoax and/or part of a government conspiracy?!?!?!? DAMN!!!!