Authorities release the names of those killed yesterday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary

Author­i­ties in Con­necti­cut have now released the names of the chil­dren and fac­ul­ty killed yes­ter­day morn­ing at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary in New­town, Con­necti­cut. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of those killed were very young chil­dren, only six years old, as has been report­ed. Three of the chil­dren were sev­en years old. The adults (all women) ranged in age from twen­ty-sev­en to fifty-six.

Here are the names and ages of the deceased:

• Mary Sher­lach, fifty-six
• Anne Marie Mur­phy, fifty-two
• Dawn Hock­sprung, forty-seven
• Lau­ren Russeau, thirty
• Rachel Davi­no, twenty-nine
• Vic­to­ria Soto, twenty-seven
• Chase Kowal­s­ki, seven
• Daniel Bar­den, seven
• Josephine Gay, seven
• Char­lotte Bacon, six
• Olivia Engel, six
• Ana Mar­quez-Greene, six
• Dylan Hock­ley, six
• Made­line Hsu, six
• Cather­ine Hub­bard, six
• Jesse Lewis, six
• James Mat­ti­oli, six
• Grace McDon­nell, six
• Emi­lie Park­er, six
• Jack Pin­to, six
• Noah Pozn­er, six
• Car­o­line Pre­v­i­di, six
• Jes­si­ca Rekos, six
• Avielle Rich­man, six
• Ben­jamin Wheel­er, six
• Alli­son Wyatt, six

No doubt we will be hear­ing more about the lives of the vic­tims in the days to come as their fam­i­ly and friends remem­ber them and hon­or their memories.

We at NPI extend our most heart­felt con­do­lences to all affect­ed by this tragedy in New­town. It’s revolt­ing and sick­en­ing to imag­ine that any human being could be capa­ble of shoot­ing class­rooms full of inno­cent kindergartners.

Police are still inves­ti­gat­ing a motive. They have report­ed­ly uncov­ered some promis­ing evi­dence already, and they have been able to deter­mine that the alleged shoot­er did not walk into the school, but rather forced him­self in, which indi­cates the school had already tak­en pre­cau­tions to ensure the safe­ty of its pupils.

It appears the admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers at Sandy Hook did all they could to pro­tect their young charges. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the assailant was armed with assault weapons, includ­ing a rifle… con­trap­tions which have no use­ful pur­pose except to injure or kill human beings. Bul­lets from those weapons (legal­ly pur­chased and owned by the shooter’s moth­er) appar­ent­ly killed all of the peo­ple list­ed above.