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The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. Shortly after 9:30 a.m. EST, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their Newtown home with a .22-caliber rifle, then drove her car to the school armed with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S semi-automatic rifle, a Glock 20SF, and a Sig Sauer P226. He shot out a window beside the locked front entrance to gain access and, within less than five minutes, killed 20 first-grade children aged 6 and 7 and six adult staff members in two classrooms and a hallway before committing suicide with a self-inflicted gunshot as first responders arrived at the school. The attack is the deadliest mass shooting at a K–12 school in U.S. history and the fourth-deadliest mass shooting by a single perpetrator in the nation.
Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, U.S.
| Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting | |
|---|---|
 Police at the scene of the shooting | |
 Location of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut | |
| Location | 41°25′12″N 73°16′43″W Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Date | December 14, 2012 c. 09:35 – 09:40:03 a.m. EST (UTC−05:00) |
| Target | Students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School |
Attack type | |
| Weapons |
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| Deaths | 28 (27 at the school, including the perpetrator; and the perpetrator's mother at home)[5][6] |
| Injured | 2[7] |
| Perpetrator | Adam Lanza[8][9] |
| Motive | Unknown[10] |
| Litigation |
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The incident prompted an immediate emergency response from Newtown Police, Connecticut State Police, and federal agencies, with the school placed on lockdown and students evacuated to a nearby firehouse. Autopsies confirmed all school victims were shot multiple times, most with the Bushmaster rifle. Investigations revealed Lanza had destroyed his computer hard drive before the shooting and had no clear motive, though a report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office stated that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but provided no indication of why he did so, or why he targeted the school. A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger's syndrome and, as a teenager, suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but concluded that these factors "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts". The report went on to say, "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems [...] combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence [...] (and) access to deadly weapons [...] proved a recipe for mass murder."
The shooting prompted renewed national debate on gun control, mental health policy, and school safety. President Barack Obama visited Newtown two days after the attack, delivered a televised address, and established a task force led by Vice President Joe Biden. The administration issued 23 executive actions on gun violence prevention in January 2013. Legislative responses included the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, and the Manchin–Toomey Amendment, to make the background check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines which can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. Both measures failed in the U.S. Senate in April 2013. Connecticut enacted comprehensive gun reforms that year, including bans on high-capacity magazines and universal background checks. More than 100 firearm-related laws were subsequently passed by individual states. The National Rifle Association advocated for placing armed personnel in schools, a policy later implemented in some districts.
Several advocacy organizations were founded in response to the tragedy, many by victims’ families. Sandy Hook Promise, established in January 2013 by parents including Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden, promotes evidence-based programs to prevent violence and has trained millions nationwide. Other initiatives include the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, focused on social-emotional learning; Safe and Sound Schools, emphasizing safety infrastructure; Moms Demand Action, founded by Shannon Watts and now part of Everytown for Gun Safety; the Newtown Action Alliance, advocating for federal gun reform; and the Newtown Foundation, supporting community healing and education.
Conspiracy theories falsely claiming that the shooting was a hoax or government operation were widely circulated online, notably by media personality Alex Jones. These claims were disproven by official investigations and court findings. In 2022, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to victims’ families in multiple defamation lawsuits.
The original Sandy Hook Elementary School was demolished in 2013. A new building, featuring enhanced security measures, opened on the same site in 2016. A permanent memorial to the 26 victims was dedicated in 2022.
Background
Sandy Hook Elementary School was located at 12 Dickinson Drive in Newtown, Connecticut, serving K–4 students in the Newtown Public Schools district. Built in 1956 to handle post-World War II growth (population rose from 3,000 in 1940 to over 7,000 by the 1950s), it opened after a 1955 bond issue and was designed by architect William F. Clarke on land donated by Charles Dickinson. Expansions in 1963 and 1972 added classrooms and facilities. As late as November 30, 2012, 456 children were enrolled at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At the time, the school's security protocols had recently been upgraded, requiring visitors to be individually admitted after visual and identification review by video monitor. Doors to the school were locked at 9:30 a.m. each day, after morning arrivals.
Newtown is in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about 17 miles (30 km) from New Haven, 30 miles (50 km) from Hartford, and 60 miles (100 km) from New York City. Violent crime had been rare in the town of 28,000 residents; there was only one homicide in the town in the ten years before the school shooting.
Under the Connecticut gun laws at the time, the 20-year-old Lanza was old enough to carry a long gun, such as a rifle or shotgun, but too young to own or carry handguns. The guns he used had been purchased legally by his mother.
Perpetrator
Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 – December 14, 2012) lived with his mother, Nancy Lanza, in Newtown, 5 miles (8 km) from the elementary school. He did not have a criminal record. He had access to guns through his mother, who was described as a "gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms". She often took her two sons to a local shooting range, where they learned to shoot. Lanza's father has said that he does not believe Nancy feared their son. She did not confide any fear of him to her sister or to her best friend, slept with her bedroom door unlocked, and kept guns in the house.
Education
Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for four and a half years. He began at Newtown Middle School in 2004, but according to his mother was "wracked by anxiety". She told friends that her son started getting upset in middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise were too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point, his anxiety was so intense that she took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. Because of the smaller class sizes, his mother moved him to a parochial school, St. Rose of Lima. According to a classmate at St. Rose of Lima, he entered "late in the school year", and he left in June 2005.
At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as "intelligent but nervous and fidgety". He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when he turned 16, he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggests his autism might have been exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was home-schooled to varying degrees by his mother and father throughout his high school years. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University. He earned a high school diploma from Newtown High School through a combination of tutoring, independent learning and college classes.
Early living, developmental and mental health problems
Lanza was born and partially raised in Kingston, New Hampshire, about 7 miles (10 km) southwest of Exeter, 30 miles (50 km) east of Manchester, and 50 miles (80 km) north of Boston. While living in New Hampshire at the time, Lanza exhibited developmental challenges before the age of three. These included communication and sensory difficulties, socialization delays, and repetitive behaviors. He was seen by the New Hampshire Birth to Three intervention program and referred to special education preschool services. Once at elementary school, he was diagnosed with a sensory-integration disorder. The sensory-processing disorder does not have official status by the medical community as a formal diagnosis but is a common characteristic of autism. His anxiety affected his ability to attend school and in 8th grade, he was placed on "homebound" status, which is reserved for children who are too disabled, even with supports and accommodations, to attend school.
When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a psychiatrist, Paul Fox. When he was 14, his parents took him to Yale University's Child Study Center, where he was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He frequently washed his hands and changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three loads of laundry a day. He also sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.
Lanza was treated by Robert King, who recommended extensive support be put in place, and King's colleague Kathleen Koenig at the Yale Child Study Center prescribed the antidepressant Celexa. Lanza took the medication for three days. His mother Nancy reported: "On the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn't even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely ... it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn't think ... He was practically vegetative." He never took the medication again. A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found that "Yale's recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza's) daily life went largely unheeded."
In a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza (Adam's father) said he suspected his son might have also had undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his other conditions. Lanza said that family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia and psychotic behavior during his son's adolescence because they mistakenly attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Asperger syndrome. Because of concerns that published accounts of Lanza's autism could result in a backlash against others with the condition, autism advocates campaigned to clarify that autism is a brain-related developmental disorder rather than a mental illness. The violence Lanza demonstrated in the shooting is generally not seen in the autistic population and none of the psychiatrists he saw detected troubling signs of violence in his disposition.
Lanza appears to have had no contact with mental health providers after 2006. The report from the Office of the Child Advocate stated: "In the course of Lanza's entire life, minimal mental health evaluation and treatment (in relation to his apparent need) was obtained. Of the couple of providers that saw him, only one—the Yale Child Study Center—seemed to appreciate the gravity of (his) presentation, his need for extensive mental health and special education supports, and the critical need for medication to ease his obsessive-compulsive symptoms."
Investigators found Lanza was fascinated with mass shootings, such as the Columbine High School massacre. Among the clippings found in his room, there was a story from The New York Times about a man who shot at schoolchildren in 1891. A book about the West Nickel Mines School shooting was also found. His computer contained two videos of gunshot suicides, movies that portrayed school shootings, and two pictures of Lanza pointing guns at his own head. Lanza also appeared to show an interest in pedophilia, and believed it should not be stigmatized.
This only came to light after Lanza died, because he never permitted others to access his bedroom, including his mother. Lanza had also taped black plastic garbage bags over the windows in his bedroom to block out sunlight. He had cut off contact with both his father and brother in the two years before the shooting and at one point communicated with his mother, who lived in the same house, only by email. A document titled "Selfish", describing Lanza's belief in the inherent selfishness of women, was found on his computer after his death.
Final months
According to a report by the Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut in November 2014, Lanza may have had anorexia nervosa. The authors wrote that "Anorexia can produce cognitive impairment and it is likely that anorexia combined with an autism spectrum disorder and OCD compounded Lanza's risk for suicide". They also noted that at the time of his death, Lanza "was anorexic (he was six feet tall (183 cm) and weighed 112 pounds (51 kg)), to the point of malnutrition and resultant brain damage."
He was also living in almost total isolation in his room, spending most of his time on the internet playing World of Warcraft and other video games. The report stated that he "descended" into a world where his only communication with the outside world was with members of a cyber-community, "a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder".
In the weeks before the killings, Lanza's mother was considering moving him to another town. She planned to purchase a recreational vehicle for him to stay in so that potential purchasers could see the house without disturbing him. The Report of the Child Advocate stated that:
In the wake of Mrs Lanza's stated plan to move out of Newtown in 2012, and perhaps stimulated by fears of leaving the "comfort zone" of his home, Adam planned and executed the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. His severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems were combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence. Combined with access to deadly weapons, this proved a recipe for mass murder."
James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at SUNY Upstate Medical University, was consulted about what motivated Lanza to kill. Knoll states that Lanza's final act conveyed a distinct message: "I carry profound hurt—I'll go ballistic and transfer it onto you."