Newtown mourns hero teacher, principal, 3 students Updated at 12:19 p.m. For a third straight day Wednesday, funeral professions rolled through a grieving Connecticut town trying to make sense of the massacre of 20 first-graders and six adults in an elementary school less than two weeks before Christmas. Difficult search for Adam Lanza's motive Dr. Joseph Young, an optometrist, said he has already been to one funeral and plans to attend two or three more. "The first few days, all you heard was helicopters and now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day," he said. It's difficult. It's just a constant reminder. Most students in Newtown went back to school Tuesday except those from Sandy Hook Elementary, where a gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle slaughtered the children and six teachers and administrators Friday. He also killed his mother at her home. If police know why, they have not said. Students at Sandy Hook, which serves kindergarten through fourth grade, will resume classes in a formerly shuttered school in a neighboring community in January. In the meantime, mourners overlapped at back-to-back funerals that started Monday and will continue all week. The first of Wednesday's funerals in Newtown was for 7-year-old Daniel Barden, a gap-toothed redhead and the youngest of three children whose family described him as "always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly affectionate, fair and so thoughtful towards others, imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in conversation: in all, a constant source of laughter and joy." Soto family shares last words with fallen daughter At the same time, in the town of Stratford, family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who has been hailed as a hero for dying while trying to shield her students, some of whom managed to escape. She would be out there protecting those babies," Soto's mother Donna Soto told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King. She had the perfect job. She loved her job," said Vicky Ruiz, a friend of Soto's since first grade. Every year, she said, Soto described her students the same way. They were always good kids. They were always angels," even if, like typical first-graders, they might not always listen, Ruiz said. Students Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi were to be laid to rest later Wednesday, and calling hours were being held for popular 47-year-old principal Dawn Hochsprung. She and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives. The massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control. In Pittsburgh, Dick's Sporting Goods said it is suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the shooting. The company also said it's removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown. Lawmakers who have joined the call to consider gun control as part of a comprehensive, anti-violence effort next year included 10-term House Republican Jack Kingston, a Georgia lawmaker elected with strong National Rifle Association backing. President Obama was "actively supportive" of a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce legislation to reinstate an assault weapons ban, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. While Mr. Obama has long supported a ban, he did little to get it passed during his first term. The National Rifle Association, silent since the shootings, said in a statement that it was "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." It gave no indication what that might entail. And no indication has been made publicly about the motive of 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who, clad all in black, broke into Sandy Hook Elementary and opened fire on students and staff. Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, at their home, and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school. Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack, even as more fragments of Lanza's life emerged. As a teenager, Lanza was so painfully shy that he would not speak or look at anyone when he came in for a haircut about every six weeks, always accompanied by his mother, said stylists in the Newtown hair salon Lanza frequented. Cutting Adam Lanza's hair "was a very long half an hour. It was a very uncomfortable situation," stylist Diane Harty said, adding that she never heard his voice. Another stylist, Jessica Phillips, said Nancy Lanza would give her son directions about what to do and where to go. He would move only "when his mother told him to," said a third stylist, Bob Skuba. Even as questions lingered about the gunman and his motive, appreciation for those who helped students escape him persisted - as well as devotion to preventing it from happening again. Andrei Nikitchyuk's young son, a boy nicknamed Bear, was on his way to the principal's office with a classmate Friday morning. The children were classroom helpers tasked with the most mundane of school day chores: delivering a teacher's attendance sheets. Before they made it, the children heard a series of loud bangs that sounded like someone slamming a door. Bear later told his dad he "saw bullets flying past." Nikitchyuk, who was in Washington on Tuesday to support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's push for tougher gun regulations, said teacher Abby Clements pulled his son and the boy's classmate into a nearby classroom as the shooting started. "He was saved by a wonderful teacher," Nikitchyuk said, his voice cracking slightly. She pulled them into a classroom and barricaded that door.