"Dial 911." "What's the location of your emergency?" "Sandy Hook Elementary School, 12 Dickenson Drive." "Okay, and what's going on down there?" "I believe there's shooting at the front glass." " Okay." " Something's going on." "I want you to take cover." "Jen, get everybody you can going down there." "It's still happening." "911, State Police..." "There's a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School," "I can hear shooting outside." "Get off 10, take a left." "Go straight through the light at the bottom of the hill and you're going to see it on your right." "State Police Emergency." "Is this the shooting in Newtown?" " Yes, it is." "Sandy Hook School." " Okay." "Do you have anybody with you right now?" "Do you have any children with you?" "I have no children." "I have five adults and one who's been shot twice." "One who's been shot twice, do you know how to administer first aid?" "No." "No." "Can you put pressure on her wounds?" "No." "You can't?" "What's going on?" "Talk to me." "He's fucking right outside the door." "I don't want to move." "Please, Jesus." "Please, Jesus." "Okay." "No, that's okay." "Please, Jesus." "Just try to stay calm, okay?" "All right?" "Please, Jesus." "Please, Jesus." "Please, Jesus." " Please, Jesus." " Okay." "All right." "You're going to be all right." "My brother-in-law called me and said, "What's going on?"" "And I said, "I can't talk to you now." "I have to..." ""There're some kids on my lawn." ""I don't know why they're there."" "I walked up to them and they looked horrible." "They looked horrible." "They were out of breath." "I could tell they had been crying, but they were quiet in their..." "They were quiet in their..." "Abject fear and terror." "And then the two boys just start talking." "They start describing..." "Describing what had happened." ""Oh, he had a big gun and a small gun."" "They just kept exclaiming." ""We can't go back!" ""We can't go back to that school" ""'cause we don't have a teacher!"" "Mahmun told me he heard..." "Do you see anything or hear anything more?" "I keep hearing shooting." " I keep hearing popping." " Okay." "Do you have your door barricaded?" "No, I'm on the floor." "Okay." "Is there a way that you've locked the door?" "No, there's no lock here." "The person's in the office." "He's in the office?" "I can hear it on the loudspeaker, yeah." "I just sat with my class and we listened to 154 shots ringing through the loudspeaker." "There's still shooting going on." "Please!" "A couple of kids were laughing." "There was like a strange laugh." "They didn't know what was going on." "And one kid kept scooching away." "And like I said, I just had this instinct." "I just wanted everybody together." "And I kept saying, "Come over here!" "Come over here!"" "Is anyone hurt?" "Do you see anyone..." "We don't know." "We don't know." "But we smell fire from the gunshots." "Did you see the shooter?" "I could see, through the crack in the back of my desk, him standing right at my doorway, barely 20 feet away, if that." "He's still in the building." "I mean, the shooting went on for what seemed like forever." "We just kept saying, "Stop, stop!"" "You know?" "And I mean..." "And then it stopped." "Yes." "What do you hear right now?" "It's..." "Now it's silent." "Thank you." "The police officers just came in." "Are there policemen there?" "Yes." "Okay." "I remember getting into that room." "All right." "You guys are okay?" "I was the police officer she was referring to." "I don't think that any of us that were in there feel that anybody needs to know specifically what we saw." "Emotionally," "I think the world needs to know to understand it." "I don't think they need..." "To know, graphically, what occurred in there." "Phone came at about 20 minutes before 10:00 this morning of a shooting." "It's believed there was one shooter, a male, who is now dead." "And the reports we're getting from law enforcement is that, of the 26 dead, most are children." "All right, it's 20 after 12:00." "We just picked up Natalie early at school." "Sweet Pea's getting all dressed and ready." "We're going to go pick up James and then we're gonna go to Daniel's concert." "Hi." "William." " That was great." " Thank you." "What a concert." "I think James is looking for a hug." "I look at these pictures and it's like it's still then." "Everything is the way it should be." "Everything looks the way it should be." "This was Sunday, December 9th of 2012." "We were out at the tree farm getting our tree." "So, this is kind of like the last few days of life as we knew it." "They were all taking turns cutting down the tree." "And, of course, little Daniel was making sure everybody had their fair time." "So, the bus would come down to the corner." "Daniel would wait here and he would race." "Mr. Wheeler would stop halfway down the block here." "And..." "And rev the engine." "And Daniel would race him." "I still dread that every day I live," "I'm one day farther away from my life with Daniel." "I didn't wanna take the clothes out of his drawer." "I didn't want to touch anything," "I wanted to leave everything just the way it was." "So, Jackie actually had her sisters, while we were away one weekend, clean out all the drawers." "I still have little secrets stashed around." "He used to wear this old yellow football helmet when he'd ride in the little seat on the back of my bicycle." "And I have that in the garage and it still has some beautiful little long, blonde hairs of his in it." "I'll keep that forever." "I was so intimately connected to every little nuance of his life." "But there was this significant gap at the end of his little life that I knew nothing about." "And I still have this need to know what he experienced." "And, I guess, you can only try to imagine how unbelievably difficult and challenging that is," "to try to interpret what your 7-year-old experienced" "as he was being murdered by a gunman in his first grade classroom." "It's Christmas Eve morning, and Natalie's on her way delivering her gifts." "She and Daniel." "He's walking down to the Malin's now." "Make sure you tell them "Merry Christmas."" "Yes, we know." "The Bardens and our kids were, like, interchangeable." "We had met the Bardens in our own yard." "And it was like a godsend." "It was amazing to think that there was this family that moved in that had three children, the same ages as our kids, boy-girl-boy, and we had boy-girl-boy, and our kids took to each other like they had known each other their whole lives." "And Kyle and Daniel were like two peas in a pod together." "They were just as comfortable at my house as they were at their house." "And Mark was my go-to because he was home mostly during the day," "I would get a call, "All right, I'll take the girls," ""you wanna take the boys or send all three kids up."" "All right, now what?" "What's next?" "Stop two, Malin house." "We developed this Friday night routine..." "I'll probably cry." "Which was something that we all looked forward to, if I could speak for everybody." "It would be a phone call early Friday morning," ""Are you guys free?" "Yeah, we're free."" ""I'll bring the dessert, you get the pizza," ""and we'll see you later after work and after school."" "And so, every Friday night, we would get together." "And we would have pizza." "It was really a good life." "I have to say, Daniel's funeral was kind of a hazy memory out of a weird dream, for me." "But we did manage to attend quite a few of the other children's funerals, and witnessed Father Bob saying funeral mass after funeral mass for 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds." "I can't answer the questions." "I don't know how this could have happened." "Shoots open a window, reaches in and pushes open a door, destroys lives." "I don't think a community can ever be prepared, especially a small town, can ever be prepared for something like this." "So, it's fearful." "It's really fearful that people's lives can be so disrupted so quickly." "Forever." "There's no making up for this." "It just..." "The foundation got cracked." "And everybody's not certain how wide that crack is going to get." "On that day, I was in physics class." "And all of a sudden, I remember my Principal, Mr. Dumet came on the loudspeaker and said," ""Everybody must go into lockdown." "This is not a drill."" "I was with one of my friends and her mom was a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, as well." "And so, I went over to her and she had already looked on her phone and seen what was happening, too." "And we sat there for a long time, waiting to get the text about our moms." "There was a lot of shouting right outside my door." ""Newtown Police!" Banging on the door." ""Get Newtown Police!"" "I opened the door and the kids just ran, they just scattered." "Shortly thereafter, I spoke to my husband and I remember saying something like, "It's bad, right?" ""Don't tell me, but it's bad."" "And he said, "They don't know yet." ""They just don't really know yet."" "And then, the next time I talked to him, he was crying on the phone." "He said, "It's really bad." "There are a lot of kids dead."" "When we got in the car with my mom, she just said, "I love you and I'm okay." ""But a lot of people aren't." ""I think a lot of my friends aren't."" "Is there a day that I don't think about it?" "I don't think there's an hour or couple of hours" "I'm not thinking of something about it." "When I went back to work," "I know the first two days, I was not there." "I was working, I wasn't there." "How did you get through your days?" "The kids." "The kids at the school." "The laughing, smiling." "It was the elephant in the room for a long time." "Some kids wanted to talk about it, some kids didn't." "My students who had Miss Soto were devastated." "And they would look up at me every day and say," ""I miss Miss Soto."" "And I was looking for something to say to that." "What do you say to that?" "And I would just hug them." "The teachers, the staff, we understand each other." "We don't even have to speak, and we know." "People came back to the school and I felt like," ""There's no way I can go back." ""There's no way I can put anything in order."" "You know, I wanted to be there for the kids." "But I was able to be there because of the kids." "And I would get up in the morning and go," ""Oh, my God." "I don't wanna go."" "But then I'd go," ""But if the kids can be there, how could I not be there?"" "We were all still in shock." "We had a spreadsheet for 26" " wakes and funerals..." " That's crazy." " Two or three a day." " Yup." "I was..." "We really had to put aside the grieving, not just for the kids, but for the adults." "I mean, how do you grieve for 26 people all at the same time?" "The story that I always think about is" "Dawn and Mary and their colleagues who were all together in a conference room, meeting with a parent." "And Dawn's immediate reaction, to get up and go running out in the hallway, charging like a bull, all 5-feet of her." "I know from my conversations with her family that..." "It was evident." "They could tell afterwards by the way her body had taken the bullets that had killed her, that she was lunging at him." "And that just says exactly the kind of woman she was." "To go after a guy like she was gonna take him down who was shooting his AR-15 at her." "Still, days I go, "It really happened."" "Yeah." ""This really happened."" "And, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but that is the new point in my life." "Things either happened before 12/14 or after 12/14." "But it's a very different life now." "Is it ever gonna stop?" "I don't know." "What is it?" " Forever and ever." " Yeah." "Four and "ever."" "The hardest moments were immediate." "Within hours, my surviving son expressed fear." "And what does a father say?" "What does every father in the world say?" ""Don't worry." "It's gonna be okay."" "And his immediate response was, as you might imagine," ""That's what you said to Ben."" "Ben, that's me." "See the resemblance?" "That's Ben, that's me." "My dad and Ben." "So amazing." "My brain says, "I just wanna keep talking about Ben." " "Can I keep taking about Ben?"" " Right." "I wanna talk about Ben all the time because I want him to stay alive." "Right." "Right." "And people ask us about Nate and Matty, which is wonderful." "But now I have started signing my cards," ""Love, David, Francine, Nate, Maddie and Ben's spirit."" "Because if I don't write that," "I feel like people are going to forget him." "I was looking at a letter to the families recently, and it was..." "Individually, they were naming every victim." "And my brain said, "Well, maybe his name won't be on the list." ""And maybe he'll just be alive."" "You know, these crazy things." "I'm still there." "Oh, hi, good to see you." "Hi, welcome to the Ben Wheeler Show." "Today, the tornadoes are coming and the elevator..." "Benny was a challenge." "A 6-year-old boy with that much energy." "Dinner table was so hard because he was just all over the place." "Oh, now, to go and have some popsicles." "Bye." "Francine's uncle took this amazing picture of him when he was three or four." "It's up in the living room." "He's jumping into a puddle and he's above the air." "And her uncle titled it "Flying Boy."" "And that's who he was." "He was so rarely connected to the earth." "He was just..." "Nothing ever moved fast enough for him." "If he got five stickers in a row, he would get some kind of positive reinforcement." "Look at this, "Gentle body, no licking, no biting."" "Great table manners." "Not so good." "You know, the way everyone does, you mark your kid's height on the wall." "This is Nate's here and Ben is here." "Starting in January of '09 and then in November of 2012, he was here." "And I don't remember exactly when Nate wrote this, but he came down here on his own." "I think it wasn't prompted in any way." "We're all terrified of forgetting what he looked like, what he sounded like." "So I will go back to a video or a picture or something just to have him back." "I have these memories, I have these pictures," "I have hair and teeth." "And yet, you go through these crazy motions of like," ""Am I just dreaming all of this?"" "I still keep expecting him to be there, but have I just gone insane?" "Is this real?" "Did he even ever exist?" "This is most of the stuff that's been..." "I don't even know how many thousands of letters and gifts and portraits." "So many of them have never been opened 'cause I just can't do that yet." "I'm gonna be..." "I love Luigi." " No, you're catching up!" " Sugar." "Jake was in third grade at the time of the shooting." "He was at school that day." "He describes 12/14 as the day hell came to his school." "He has gone through cycles of grief the same as any adult." "And we went through a period where he didn't want to talk about Dylan." "He didn't want us to mention his name, he wanted us to take down all the photos of Dylan in the house." "Lights always have to be on now." "He's 10 now, and you get to the point where your imagination of monsters under the bed, and he's seen the real monsters unfortunately." "Good evening." "We lost our son, Benjamin, the morning of December 14th to an unstable, suicidal individual who had access to a weapon that has no place in a home." "Right now, professionals in every area pertaining to this crime, from mental health to parenting to school safety, are unable to connect the necessary dots to prevent this from happening again." "When I look at this event, I see these dominoes, each of them very specific, that had to line up that way that morning for things to happen the way they did here." "And when I look at that, all I see are the spaces in between where somebody, somewhere along the way, could have stopped the next domino from falling." "The liberty of any person to own a military-style assault weapon and a high capacity magazine and keep them in their home is second to the right of my son to his life." "His life." "Let's honor the founding documents and get our priorities straight." "Thank you." "What happened to our children was transforming in ways you can never anticipate." "And there is an immediate human desire" "to protect the rest of the world from having to go through this." "My name is Laurie Veillette." "I am a volunteer EMT for Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and I staff every Friday." "In the early morning of December 14th..." "We had no idea there was a shooting." "It was never..." "We were staging." "I thought it might have been a domestic." "And a woman was given to us and I was so happy to see her because she was injured, but not life-threatening at all." "And I thought, "Okay, this is it." "This is great." "I mean," ""I saw all the police go in, I don't know exactly what's going on," ""but here's this patient who's gonna make it." "This is good."" "We load her up." "Great." "And I'm in the back, ready to rock and roll, and the door swings back open and there's a paramedic with..." "And that just changed everything." "And, um..." "And then to know that that was just one of many was..." "Was disgusting, was horrible." "But, that's what a tragedy is, I guess." "Unexpected, absolute horribleness." "Come on, Daddy!" " You don't want your coat?" " No." "Daddy, he's in..." "Oh, my goodness." "Oh, wow." "You're just coming home at 12:30 and then you're..." "And then you're..." "You're here until soccer?" "In the first year, we were alternating our meltdowns." "Sometimes, we'd meltdown together and then the kids would come to our aid." " Bye." " Careful." "James and Natalie would just emerge from wherever they were and put their arms around us, literally." "There's a little more in here." "Who knows how to do this?" "There's no..." "There's no way to do this." "And we don't want to sweep it under the rug." "And at the same time, we don't want to dwell on it." "And even with my wife Jackie, I feel like if I'm having a moment," "I don't want to bring that on her if she's having a good moment." "I didn't like seeing my parents all upset." "And they definitely were upset a lot longer and a lot more than I was." "And then they'd always feel bad like," ""Oh, I shouldn't be crying in front of you 'cause it's making you upset."" "But then I'd feel bad because they were trying to not think about it because of me." "I remember before Natalie came back, teachers said that she just wanted to be treated like nothing happened." "So that's what we all did." "To me, Newtown was always just this perfect..." " I mean, I love Newtown." " Yeah." "It was always this perfect little town, and everything is so safe and everything is so..." " I mean, everyone is so nice here." " Yeah." "So, I would never expect that somebody like that would be just around the corner." "I feel like because he was..." "I don't know how to say it." " Disturbed or something." " Yeah." "I feel like she should have been more careful." " And she let him do what he wanted." " Yeah." "And she had the guns in the house." "I think if you have a gun and you have a son, you should have it in a safe and maybe not let him know the code." "No." "So, this was my driveway." "And the shooter's house is kind of kitty-corner to us over here." "Part of me really wanted to go and see it come down, but I'd probably just spit at the house as it came down, to be perfectly honest." "You know your neighbors' houses, you just don't always know your neighbors." "Yeah." "I'm always thinking about the shooter and his mother in particular." "I'm certainly not into a space of forgiveness yet." "Might never be, I don't know." "If he had lived, if he hadn't committed suicide," "I wouldn't forgive him at all." "And I don't forgive his mother for giving him access to the weapons either." "And after 12/14," "I used to have dreams about it." "It's these crazy superhero dreams." "Dreams where I'm in the classroom and I'm able to stop him, or dreams where I'm in the classroom and I'm not able to stop him and I die with Dylan." "But I'm with my son." "Dr. Begg, did you actually treat Sandy Hook victims?" "Uh, yes." "I was..." "I was in the ER that day when the..." "When the victims came in." "Can you describe the kinds of wounds and the number of bullets in these small bodies?" "Most of the..." "Most of the victims actually didn't come in." "And we have such horrific injuries to little bodies, that's what happens." "They don't even make it to the hospital." "The coroner from the state of Connecticut, when he did his review, and this is public knowledge, stated that each body had three to 11 bullets." "Okay?" "When a child has three to 11 bullets in them, and it's an assault-type bullet, it explodes inside the body." "It doesn't go through a straight line." "It goes in and then it opens up." "That..." "That's not a survivable injury." "This is a public health issue." "30,000 people a year die." "Folks who have cancer and..." "And..." "And stroke and heart attack, there's a lot of research." "But there's not the research." "There's just anecdotes..." "On this day at Sandy Hook," "I knew that..." "I knew that a lot of children had already been killed." "And may not be coming in." "But I only let the staff know that there were a couple coming in, the ones that we knew because about a third of the staff we had actively working were from Newtown, such as me" "and many of them had..." "Had children in the school systems at that time." "And so, as it turns out, we ended up getting just a couple of the..." "Couple of the victims." "And we tried our best." "We tried our best and we were unsuccessful." "I'm not an activist, but I said to myself that day that..." "That..." "I'm not..." "I'm not taking this..." "I'm not taking this one laying down." "As somebody who was so close to losing the person that I love most in my life," "I knew that in honor of the people who I knew who died, all of the teachers who died, I knew them," "I needed to do something." "I went with my dad and about 100 others from Newtown, and we ended up leading this march of 6,000 Americans." " Stop the violence!" " Stop the violence!" "There's a picture of Sarah holding up a sign when she and her dad went to the march on Washington in January following the tragedy." "And there's a little spark in her eye that had a look of like," ""I'm not really sure what I'm about to get into," ""but this is big."" "Twelve relatives of Sandy Hook victims caught a ride to Washington aboard Air Force One Monday night after the President came to their state to hail Connecticut's sweeping new gun laws." "So, Connecticut's shown the way." "And now is the time for Congress to do the same." "The families of eight Newtown victims will be back on Capitol Hill today." "Tragedy has turned them into accidental lobbyists pushing for new gun restrictions." "I'm a guitar player." "I don't belong in the halls of Congress trying to change the world." "But here we are." "I was very naive going into this, okay?" "And I thought making sure that everybody that purchases firearms should have to go through a background check." "I thought that that was the low hanging fruit, and that, if anything, that's gonna get through." "What larger job description do they have than keeping their constituents safe?" "What's the..." "What's a bigger line item in their job description?" "Morning." "We are committed, completely committed, to seeing this through for all the changes that help eliminate the causes of gun violence." "We were downstairs in the basement of the Senate when we started getting news that it looked like senators who saw that we may not pass then were jumping ship." "And I was just incredulous, like, "Are you kidding me?"" "The gun control legislation that was supposed to tighten background checks, was defeated today in the US Senate." "We are here now, we will always be here because we have no other choice." "We are not going away." "And every day, as more people are killed in this country because of gun violence, our determination grows stronger." "Let's clip the length and see where it goes." "I do think of Mark as a brother because we work together very closely." "We can sense what each other is feeling and protect each other when necessary." "'Cause we've chosen a similar path of what we wanna do to honor our children." "That's a bond for life now with that family." "I will always have their back and I believe that they'll always have mine as well." "Yes, I know you're on a tight time schedule, but make sure you get a chance to meet Nicole and..." " Hi." " Hi." " Kim Jacobs." " It's very nice to meet you." "Sorry for your loss though." " Thank you, I appreciate that." " Absolutely." "As a member of a major city chief's organization, right after Sandy Hook happened, we received briefing about the horror that actually transpired." "We heard all the politicians talking about something's gotta be done." "And now the politicians have backed off." "And guess what?" "It's not on the agenda anymore." "So this was, um..." "This is my son, Dylan." "This is when he was about four years old." "And this was taken about four months before he died." "He needed me in a different way than Jake needed me." "He was always close." "When we first found out that Dylan was autistic," "Ian and I went through a mini-grieving process knowing that he might never lead an independent life, he might struggle to make loving relationships." "Then he opened our eyes up in a very different way." "The way he would look at things and make me stop and get down to his level and look at things with him." "Colors are seen differently, sounds are heard differently, textures are felt differently." "He actually added so much more to this family than we even realized at the time." "It kills me." "I don't think people realize every day it's like taking my heart out and doing that all over again." "And that at the end of the day, you just take all the tattered remains and shove it back in and wake up to do it again the next day." "I'm so sorry to interrupt you." " I'm so glad to talk to you." " That's okay, Pastor Jenny." "But I always hate to take y'all to the deep places." "No, no, I appreciate the question." "But I knew that that's where you were going towards the end." "So, I'm so grateful that you were able to share that." "I know that's hard." "Channel 4 would like to talk with you a little bit more tonight if that's okay." "We're all set." "Talk to me about your son if you will." "What do I need to know?" "Dylan, um..." "Every parent thinks their child is special." "So I'm no different in that regard." "Dylan was an absolute brave soul." "Hey, how you doing?" "You're sideways." "Oh, you're still sideways." "Where are you?" "That's not our house." "Are you in the bathroom?" "You're on the toilet right now." "Oh, man." "You crack me up, kid." "It never goes away." "It just never really goes away." "I mean, standing at the door of that school and seeing that broken glass, hearing that crunching," "I hear that still in my sleep." "You know, Easter marks for us the hope that every springtime holds for us." "It gives us that promise that there is new life." "For too many hours and for too many days, we've been caught up in a very gray winter." "And now the days grow longer, the darkness grows less." "We're not gonna let the darkness overwhelm us, but the darkness is there." "It's still part of life, and you go in the parking lot when the parents are picking the kids up and you still see they're apprehensive." ""Is my child coming out?"" "Nothing has happened, there's been no more, but you can see in their faces, like," ""My child's gonna come out, right?"" "It's just, you see that still in this community." "Thank you." "What can I do?" "How can I be most effective in this situation?" "We're all victimized with this." "You go through the teachers that were shot, you go through the 12 children that escaped, you go through all the first responders." "Then you start realizing the whole community's been victimized." "And where do we go to protect and preserve ourselves?" "Here's the introduction and then a couple of songs." "Then you and I do..." " So you and I are doing..." " That's us." "Do you wanna do it together still or..." "Yes." "If you're okay with that." "I'll do whatever you want me to do." "Um..." "You just, um..." "Look at me." " Mmm." " It's gonna be all right." "Every day we would drive by their house, every day." "And I didn't know what to do." "Do we stop by, do we not stop by?" "Do I bring them dinner?" "Do I..." "It was unchartered territory." "'Cause, I think, at the firehouse that day, there was such tragedy." "And I don't think I understood that it would change everything." "There is a volunteer firehouse just adjacent to that school, and that is where teachers were told to take the children just as soon as they could." "Are there families there who don't know where their children are?" "Yes." "There are still families here who do not know where their children are." "And they're not being told anything." "You could feel it." "You could feel the emergency in the air." "You could feel panic." "There was all this murmuring going on, "The principal was shot." ""There's a couple of shooters." "There's kids in a bathroom."" "There was a lot of little snippets of information, but they hadn't heard anything about kids at that point." "Um..." "And then..." "And then there was the room with the parents waiting for their kids." "We just kind of waited." "And then, they brought the children out and it was heartbreaking to see them." "They were all holding hands in a line." "And I saw my Kyle come." "And true to his personality," "I think he was skipping and holding somebody's hand." "And he said, "Mom, I didn't cry, I didn't cry."" "And his teacher came behind." "She had a wild look on her face and she said, "They heard it all." She said, "They heard it all." ""They heard the guns, they heard the screaming," ""but they heard it all."" "And then, you look over where the first graders are and there are so many parents with no children." "And there was that feeling of, "Where are their kids?"" "And then, um..." "And then I saw Mark, and there was no Daniel." "Then, the Governor came up and said," ""We regret to let you know that" ""20 children were shot and killed in the school," ""as well as six educators."" "And I tell you, the room erupted." "It will forever..." "Forever be in mind." "This guy walked into the school and he went left." "Why did he go left?" "Kyle was on the right." "The second door on the right." "You know, why did he go this way and not that way?" "I don't know." "It's not fair." "None of this is fair." "Benny loved this place." "He loved Peter Rabbit's house." "He loved to come here and play." "You can go inside and play around." "It's a really beautiful playhouse." "Isn't that sweet?" "If you look at any catastrophic event, there are gonna be places where if that person had turned left instead of right, events would not have unfolded the way they did." "But that's life." "That's the chaos of the universe." "And I, previously, found a certain amount of beauty in that chaos." "And now, the challenge is to continue to see the beauty in that chaos." "Because now, the chaos has hurt me." "Demolition work has started at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut." "The school, of course, the site of that December 2012 mass shooting..." "For the first several months I could not imagine, why anyone in the world would want to go back into that school." "And one morning, and it was literally one morning," "I woke up and I had to go." "I knew the school was gonna be torn down." "And I had to see it before it was gone forever." "It answered small, minor questions that turned into huge questions when you're unable to sleep." ""Where was he?" "What did it look like?" "How big was the room?"" "What it gave me was a remarkable amount of respect and admiration for the men and women who were there." "I didn't have a face-to-face meeting with the EMT who was with Ben." "But she wrote us a lovely, lovely letter." "She was afraid to write to us because she felt like she was forever going to be a terrible reminder of his loss." "And I wrote her back and I said, "That's not the case at all." ""You know, you are one of the good guys."" "Yeah, that was a tough letter." "But I couldn't not send it, if it makes any sense." "I knew I had to say something." "I knew I had to let them know that..." "That he was cared for, that there was love there." "I mean, I went to the wake, 'cause I had to." "They didn't know who I was at that point." "And I went to give him a big hug and broke down completely and then, that was the last..." "That was the last words I've ever spoken with him." "It's just awkward when you walk around town and you see the faces that you see, maybe on TV, of the parents and it's just..." "What's the social norm for that?" "What do you say?" "Your police officers, your state troopers, your firefighters, can't say enough about them, this amazing local town here." "Thank you so much." "Because of my role in there, some parents rightfully feel uncomfortable because it reminds them of things." " You doing okay?" " Yes." "Good." "I'm glad to see it." " It's good to see you again." " You, too." " It's been a while." " Yes." "But I always recognize you when I see you." " Things are all right?" " Yeah, we're doing okay." "We'll be all right." "You know, we're all in this together." "Well, it's..." "You know, worst thing in the world happened to you." "You can't give up on all of life." "Absolutely." "You know, you're a good man." "I do remember coming upon Dylan." "And the only thing that I remember very specifically about it" "was that his teacher's arm was around him." "And as odd as it seems," "I got a little comfort knowing that he wasn't alone." "You just never know where it's gonna come, what's gonna trigger you and bring back an emotion or a sound or a smell." "You never know at what point you're right back to day one." "And I guess that's something that's just gonna be with me for the rest of my life, really." "I had only recently seen a photo and I suddenly looked at it and I thought, "Oh, my God." "That's me."" "And seeing me with my friend holding me." "She just held me for the longest time." "And that's the last memory I have of being at the firehouse." "I don't remember how I got home." "Even then, we stayed at our friend's house for a few days" "and the cop who had to officially tell us that Dylan was dead, they took his photo, writing description of what he'd been wearing that day." "And they came to the house at about 1:30 in the morning, or some ridiculous hour to confirm to us that he was..." "That he was one of them and..." "And even then, I still thought something's gotta be wrong." "This can't be." "This just isn't supposed to happen." "It's funny, I remember when I saw him in his casket on my birthday." "I thought that that would be when I finally realized that he was dead." "And even then, I couldn't even really accept it because that was his body but that's not D..." "When I could..." "I was holding his hand and I could see there was his torn cuticles from where he bit his nails." "My son was full of life." "Even then, I couldn't..." "And that's why I still just can't accept it." "That's why sometimes traveling is easy for me 'cause it's like I can imagine he's home." "So, when I come home from traveling, it's just..." "It's having to accept it all over again." "And I don't know how you're supposed to get over something like this." "You were saying that you struggle to know what to say." "Sometimes it's exactly the same for me." "Right." "Right." "'Cause it is, what do you say, and how do you put people at ease and because we're all in this together." "You know how many times I lay down in bed and just think of the unfairness of this whole thing." "Now, I didn't know Dylan and..." "And somehow, in the back of my head, sometimes I feel like I missed out on something." "Because he was six then, my son, and when I told him about Dylan, he got quiet." "He just looked at me." "He goes, "He didn't talk much." ""But he was such a nice boy."" "Thanks." "Because I don't really know what Dylan's classmates thought of him." " Right." " Because he was hard to..." "He didn't often talk to me about his classmates 'cause he couldn't really articulate it very well." "Right." "And I know I've reached out to you and said that someday..." "Yeah." "I want to hear from you about your son's experience, because there's a need to know as much detail as I can about..." "About Dylan's last moments, but I'm not ready for it." "Yeah, I understand that." "I mean, when you think about it, you could read all the newspapers you want." "But at the end of the day, there's only 11 kids that know what happened." "Yeah." "We had made it our point to remember specifics about that day." "So, we have that information." "Thanks." "Whenever you guys are ready, we'd be, of course, willing to sit down and share what we know." "Yeah." "Not today." "Please." " Nope." " Not today." " Someday." " Someday." "I'd like to, but I'm not ready for it." "He was a good boy." " Thank you." " I'm sorry." "No, don't..." "Please, don't apologize." "Don't ever..." "Don't ever apologize." "It's okay." "I need to know these things as well." " How are you, my friend?" " Oh, good to see you." " Good to see you." " Thank you for coming up." "You want to grab this, Mark, so I can..." "Yeah." "At the third annual Daniel Barden Highland MudFest." "Do you promise to live life to its fullest?" "I do!" "Do you promise to cherish family and friends?" "I do!" "Do you promise to love, laugh, and enjoy this moment?" "I do!" " Hey." " Hey." "Good luck." " Thank you." " Thanks for doing this, guys." " Thank you." " Enjoy it." "Now we're talking." "Yay Kyle!" "Hey, I'm coming to get you." "Every day I look at Kyle and I think, "Thank God for miracles."" "Nice job." "And I find myself having to take a breath before I talk about Kyle in front of them." "Right?" " All good." " Yeah, all good." "'Cause, I don't want..." "I don't want to cause them any more pain." "Kyle has since taken to growing his hair long, which is how Daniel always had his hair." "And Kyle's very attached to his hair." "And I think that's some of his way of carrying Daniel with him." "I'd like to introduce my sweet little Natalie." "My parents were saying, "Write down things," ""because, we're not gonna have memories of when we were really young,"" "'cause I was in fifth grade." "So, I didn't want to forget things." "I didn't want to think about what happened, but I didn't want to forget my brother." "That would just be awful to ever be a grownup and not remember things." "I don't like it." "It's not weird though." " Like, talking about him, it's just..." " Yeah." "Nobody feels weird about it." "'Cause, it's only weird if you make it weird." "Yeah, it's just good memories." "Yeah." "Does Kyle talk about Daniel?" "Well, not a lot." "Just because..." "I think it's more touchy for him." "But, I mean, overall, I know he has this box where he keeps a picture of him, a "What Would Daniel Do?" bracelet." "And I think it's under his bed or something." "And I think it's cute, how he has that." "Mmm-hmm." "Some things you do to remember people." " And it's just for you." "It's just..." " Yeah." "You don't want anybody else to know about it or anything." "I keep telling myself, "We did everything right."" "Every single parent who put their kid on the bus that morning did everything right." "And those parents whose children survived, and it bothers them and it hurts them, they also did everything right." "And we have to hang on to that." "You know what Devon Pope is actually doing?" " What?" " He's writing a fan-fiction now." "Nobody in the troop likes Donald Trump, keep this in mind, Dad." "Okay." " Nobody in the troop likes him." " Okay." "But Devon is writing a fan-fiction, where he is a space emperor and he has to stop the evil..." "I remember my wife coming to me and saying," ""Would you consider getting pregnant again?"" "And I said, "I cannot think about that right now."" "But, a couple weeks later, I went back to her with my resounding yes." "I thought it was a great idea." "And the person I was thinking about wasn't me and it wasn't my wife, it was our son, our surviving son." "It was very important to us that he have another foundation to build on in his life." "There he is with his dwarf hat." "Having his birthday party on the weekend, for Matty, was a hard day." "When was the last time there was a first birthday in this house?" "I have a certain amount of envy toward my wife, especially, who sees Ben all the time in her dreams." "And to people who knew him well, who see him and talk to him." "What was that?" "Look, here we go." "Now we're going to go the other way." "You ready?" "There they come." "How could someone who was in my life for six years suddenly be gone?" "It's impossible to understand." "But he was here." "He did exist." "And he has a legacy that I have to fulfill for him." "And that I will fulfill for him." "Gun violence, for me, was always just something that I saw in the news." "And I certainly never thought it would impact me or my community." "And then it did." "Like the Hockleys, we moved to Newtown for the community and the schools." "My wife, Jackie, is a school teacher." "Yeah, cool." "And when we're coming in to land, important thing is to get the feet up and front, okay?" "Okay." "Might be coming a little fast for you." "Just slide along." "That's how easy it is." " Do you remember that?" " I do." "I do." "I don't want closure." "I mean, how could I ever possibly say, "Okay, I'm over this now."" "I mean, there is no closure." "I had my first dream, real vivid dream that this happened." "But somehow, he got out." "He emerged and he was okay." "And I just grabbed him and I held him to me." "And I was just wailing and shrieking, crying in joy that he was back."