In the immediate aftermath of the shooting of 20 students and six school staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., no one knew or could have imagined the magnitude of what had transpired.
Thirty minutes passed between the incident and the first media reports that police were responding to a school shooting. Details were sketchy. The first injuries described in the press were those of a teacher, said to have been shot in the foot — a seemingly minor wound that gave a momentary sense of relief to those who had tuned in to the unraveling events.
Soon thereafter, however, it became clear that the situation was much worse. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., police confirmed “multiple victims,” and by 11:24 a.m. the Hartford Courant was reporting that children were among the dead. It would be around 12:50 p.m. that the number of victims was confirmed at 27.
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