On this day a deranged lunatic went into a elementary school and murdered 20 children and 6 staff members. I will not mention the killer because he doesn’t deserve our attention, He took the easy way out.
These are the names of the Sandy Hook elementary school mass murder.
Perpetrator’s mother: Nancy Lanza, 52 (shot at home) School personnel: Rachel D’Avino, 29, behavior therapist Dawn Hochsprung, 47, principal Anne Marie Murphy, 52, special education teacher Lauren Rousseau, 30, teacher Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist Victoria Leigh Soto, 27, teacher Students: Charlotte Bacon, 6 Daniel Barden, 7 Olivia Engel, 6 Josephine Gay, 7 Dylan Hockley, 6 Madeleine Hsu, 6 Catherine Hubbard, 6 Chase Kowalski, 7 Jesse Lewis, 6 Ana Márquez-Greene, 6 James Mattioli, 6 Grace McDonnell, 7 Emilie Parker, 6 Jack Pinto, 6 Noah Pozner, 6 Caroline Previdi, 6 Jessica Rekos, 6 Avielle Richman, 6 Benjamin Wheeler, 6 Allison Wyatt, 6
We can look for answers but we will never really find them. I am not going into the politics of this and the aftermath, because quite frankly both sides of the divide sicken me.
One fact is what needs to be remembered, all these kids would still be at school going age today, 10 years later.
It is hard to believe it has been 23 years ago since the Columbine High School massacre happened.
On April 20,1999, the Columbine High School massacre took place in Colorado as two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.
So many articles have been written about it and books full of analysis have been published about it. Rather then going into the lives of the 2 killers, maybe it is a better ideas at this stage to read the experiences of the mother of one of the killers.
Sue Klebold’s son, Dylan, and his friend, Eric Harris, killed 13 people at Columbine high school. Sue is still haunted by one question: is there anything she could have done?
“I can be in a doctor’s waiting room and still hope they call me by my first name, rather than shout out Mrs Klebold. Every time I meet someone and give my name, there’s a moment of hesitancy where I watch their face very closely. They may say, ‘Gee, why does that sound so familiar?’”
In these cases the assumption is made in the aftermath of a shooting that the fault must lie predominantly with the parents – or, rather, with the mother. “A mother is supposed to know,” Klebold says.
Sue Klebold worked in the same building as a parole office, and often felt alienated and frightened getting in the elevator with ex-convicts. After Columbine, she writes, “I felt that they were just like my son. That they were just people who, for some reason, had made an awful choice and were thrown into a terrible, despairing situation. When I hear about terrorists in the news, I think, ‘That’s somebody’s kid.’ “
Recalling the day her son was buried, Ms Klebold said he was laid to rest in a cardboard box, and broke down into floods of tears.She was desperate to understand what drove her son to commit such an atrocious crime.
“He was just there in a cardboard box and they allowed us each to have a few minutes with him. What I remember doing was just wanting to crawl in that casket with him, he was so cold I just kept thinking, I’ve got to get him warm, I just wanted him to be warm.
“I said out loud, ‘Darling help me understand what happened, that’s all I want to understand’. And I didn’t realise until this very moment that did became my life mission, I hope Dylan has helped me understand because that’s what I’ve been seeking for 20 years, was understanding.”
Sue remembered the moment she was told that her son was one of the shooters, admitting that she prayed for her son to die after finding out he had hurt so many people.
“I got home and before long a SWAT team got there and a detective and it was just craziness. They were saying 25 people were dead and I remember thinking at one point, if Dylan is really hurting people the way they’re saying he is – I prayed that he would die.”
For months Sue was in denial about what her her son had done: “They said the boys did all these terrible things. Not only killed and hurt people, but that they would say awful racist things and sadistic things and I just shut that out of my mind. I thought, Dylan would not say anything like that. They had got so much information wrong about Dylan and our family, that I settled into the belief system that they were wrong about what Dylan did.”
“We like to feel that something like that could never happen to us. It can happen to someone else, it can’t happen to us. And that’s why I think so many people get comfort from vilifying the parents of shooters, because it makes them feel safer. I understand; but one of the frightening things about this reality is that people who have family members who do things like this are just like the rest of us. I’ve met several mums of mass shooters, and they are as sweet and nice as they can be. You wouldn’t know, if you saw all of us in a room, what brought us together.”
It took Sue six months to fully acknowledge the extent of her son’s crimes, with police having to show Sue evidence that proved the massacre was premeditated.
“For the first time I got it,’ Sue said. ‘I saw it was planned, I saw video tapes they had made, I saw Dylan in a way I had never seen him before, they were talking about what they were going to do, it showed him with weapons. It was horrifying to see him in that mode. I had been grieving so much for this lost previous child and remembering who he was and that was the point I realised who he was to the rest of the world, everything died in my world, God died, my belief in truth in what my family was.”
After the murders at Columbine, the Klebold family issued a statement through their attorney, expressing condolences to the victims families, and in May 1999, she wrote personal letters to both the families of those killed and survivors who were injured, expressing similar sentiments. The Klebold family initially refused to believe Dylan’s involvement in the massacre, but in an interview with Andrew Solomon, Sue Klebold stated that “seeing those videos was as traumatic as the original event […] Everything I had refused to believe was true. Dylan was a willing participant and the massacre was not a spontaneous impulse.”
In 2016, Sue published ‘A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy’ She donated the profits from her book to mental health charities, research, and suicide prevention, toward the goal of helping parents and professionals find more ways to detect and treat signs of mental distress.
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The last few years have been a strange year for a great number of countries across the world, especially when it comes to education. There is no doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic will have consequences down the line for many students.
However most of them when they go back to school, they will still see their fellow school friend and students.
During the Holocaust a great number Jewish children were killed. In the Netherlands 75 % of all Jews were murdered. Yet the Nazis still created the illusion, that life was reasonably ‘normal’ for the Jews. Jewish children were still going to school, although their curriculum was greatly reduced. Even extra curricular activities were still encouraged.
This to me is one of the more sickening of the Nazi occupation, they gave people false hope. I have said this before that the Nazis had never been abled to succeed with their final solution plans without the help of other. The bureaucrats, the civil servants, the public transport staff and also other citizens who thought they could benefit from the removal of their Jewish neighbours, this wasn’t only the case in the Netherlands but all of occupied Europe. The one main difference with the Netherlands compared to many of the other countries, the Dutch had an extremely efficient public service, which was used to its full capacity by the Nazis.
I sometimes wonder how distressing it must have been for those poor children to see that every time they came back to school from a break, or after the weekend, some of their classmates were gone. What questions would have gone through their minds?
Any nation that kills their children, kills its own future. Most of the children in the pictures in this blog would have been murdered during the Holocaust. I don’t know their names, where they lived, what age they were. But that is not important, all I know that none of them deserved to be treated like subhuman, none of them deserved the be murdered, none of their futures should have been stolen from them. What they deserve now is to be remembered and for all is us to work hard to avoid something like the Holocaust happening again.
The Bath School massacre, was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan which killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and 6 adults and injured at least 58 other people. Kehoe killed his wife and firebombed his farm, then detonated an explosion in the Bath Consolidated School before committing suicide by detonating a final device in his truck.It is the deadliest mass murder to take place at a school in United States history.
Andrew Kehoe was the 55-year-old school board treasurer and was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the Spring 1926 election for township clerk. He was thought to have planned his “murderous revenge” after that public defeat.Kehoe left behind a stenciled sign on his farm fence that read “Criminals are made, not born.”
He had a reputation for difficulty on the school board and in personal dealings. In addition, he was notified that his mortgage was going to be foreclosed upon in June 1926. For much of the next year, a neighbor noticed that he had stopped working on his farm and thought that he might be planning suicide. During that period, Kehoe purchased explosives and discreetly planted them on his property and under the school.
Prior to May 18, Kehoe had loaded the back seat of his truck with all sorts of metal debris capable of producing shrapnel during an explosion. He also bought a new set of tires for his truck so it wouldn’t break down when transporting the explosives. He didn’t want it to look suspicious that his truck was full of dangerous products. He made many trips to Lansing for more explosives, as well as the school, town, and his house.
Many of his neighbors noticed how busy he was driving around, but never thought to make any comment about it. Multiple times, a neighbor to the school saw a man carrying objects into the building at night, but never thought to mention it to anyone.
Nellie Kehoe had been discharged on May 16 from Lansing’s St. Lawrence Hospital.[16] Between her release and the bombings two days later, Kehoe killed his wife. He put her body in a wheelbarrow located in the rear of the farm’s chicken coop, where it was found in a heavily charred state after the farm explosions and fire. Piled around the cart were silverware and a metal cash box. Ashes of several bank notes could be seen through a slit in the cash box. Kehoe had placed and wired homemade pyrotol firebombs in the house and all the buildings of the farm. The burned remains of his two horses were found tied in their enclosures with their legs wired together, to prevent their rescue during the fire.
Classes began at 8:30 a.m. that morning. At about 8:45 a.m., in the basement of the north wing of the school, an alarm clock set by Kehoe detonated the dynamite and pyrotol he had hidden there.
Rescuers heading to the scene of the Kehoe farm fire heard the explosion at the school building, turned back and headed toward the school. Parents within the rural community also began rushing to the school. The school building had turned into a war zone] with thirty-eight people, mostly children, being killed in the initial explosion.
First-grade teacher Bernice Sterling told an Associated Press reporter that the explosion was like an earthquake:
“It seemed as though the floor went up several feet,” she said. “After the first shock I thought for a moment I was blind. When it came the air seemed to be full of children and flying desks and books. Children were tossed high in the air; some were catapulted out of the building.
About a half hour after the explosion, Kehoe drove up to the school and saw Superintendent Huyck. Kehoe summoned the superintendent over to his truck. Charles Hawson testified at the Inquest that he saw the two men struggle over some type of long gun and that the car then exploded.killing Superintendent Huyck, Kehoe, Nelson McFarren (a retired farmer)] and Cleo Clayton, an eight-year-old second grader. Clayton, a survivor of the first blast, had wandered out of the school building debris and was killed by the fragmentation from the exploding vehicle.
The explosion also mortally wounded postmaster Glenn O. Smith (who lost a leg and died later that day of his wounds) and injured several others.
On 23 August 1944, an American United States Army Air Forces Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber crashed into the centre of the village of Freckleton, Lancashire, England. The aircraft crashed into the Holy Trinity Church of England School, demolishing three houses and the Sad Sack Snack Bar. The death toll was 61, including 38 children.
Two newly refurbished B-24s, prior to delivery to the 2nd Combat Division, departed USAAF Base Air Depot 2 at Warton Aerodrome on a test flight at 10.30 am. Due to an impending violent storm, both were recalled. By the time they had returned to the vicinity of the aerodrome, however, the wind and rain had significantly reduced visibility. Contemporary newspaper reports detailed wind velocities approaching 60 mph (100 km/h), water spouts in the Ribble Estuary and flash flooding in Southport and Blackpool.
At Holy Trinity School, teachers and students observed the darkness descend on the village. The pounding rain was overshadowed by the gusting winds, the roar of thunder, and lightning bolts slicing through the sky. Five years old at the time, Ruby Whittle (nee Currell) remembers, “It went very, very dark. There was thunder and lightning, and all sorts of crashes and bangs overhead. I remember the teacher putting on the classroom lights and she began reading to us.”
On approach from the west, towards runway 08, and in formation with the second aircraft, First Lieutenant John Bloemendal,pilot of the first Consolidated B-24H Liberator USAAF serial number 42-50291 (named Classy Chassis II), reported to the control tower that he was aborting landing at the last moment and would perform a go-around.
Shortly afterwards, and out of sight of the second aircraft, the aircraft hit the village of Freckleton, just east of the airfield.
Already flying very low to the ground and with wings near vertical, the aircraft’s right wing tip first hit a tree-top, and then was ripped away as it impacted with the corner of a building. The rest of the wing continued, ploughing along the ground and through a hedge. The fuselage of the 25-ton bomber continued, partly demolishing three houses and the Sad Sack Snack Bar, before crossing Lytham Road and bursting into flames. A part of the aircraft hit the infants’ wing of Freckleton Holy Trinity School. Fuel from the ruptured tanks ignited and produced a sea of flames.
In the school, thirty-eight school children and six adults were killed. The clock in one classroom stopped at 10.47 am. In the Sad Sack Snack Bar, which catered specifically for American servicemen from the airbase, fourteen were killed: seven Americans, four Royal Air Force airmen and three civilians. The three crew on the B-24 were also killed.
A total of 23 adults and 38 children died in the disaster.
The devastation in the infants’ wing was complete. Seven of the young victims were either first or second cousins to each other. Ironically, three of the children were evacuees from the London area. They had come to Freckleton as part of Operation Rivulet. The British government had instituted this program to move children to safe havens out of the range of German V-1 rocket attacks. Only two children from Freckleton, Ruby Whittle and George Carey (David Madden was from Brighton, England), escaped the infants’ wing devastation. For years to come, the local school was missing an entire grade level.
The official report stated that the exact cause of the crash was unknown, but concluded that the pilot had not fully realised the danger the storm posed until under way in his final approach, by which time he had insufficient altitude and speed to manoeuvre, given the probable strength of wind and downdraughts that must have prevailed.
Structural failure of the aircraft in the extreme conditions was not ruled out, although the complete destruction of the airframe had precluded any meaningful investigation.
Noting that many of the pilots coming to the UK commonly believed that British storms were little more than showers, the report recommended that all U.S. trained pilots should be emphatically warned of the dangers of British thunderstorms.
A memorial garden and children’s playground were opened in August 1945, in memory of those lost, the money for the playground equipment having been raised by American airmen at the Warton airbase. A fund for a memorial hall was started, and the hall was finally opened in September 1977. In addition to a memorial in the village churchyard, a marker was placed at the site of the accident in 2007
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History of Sorts 
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