Connecticut school shooting: six-year-old stayed alive by playing dead
A six-year-old girl survived the Sandy Hook massacre by playing dead among the bodies of her classmates until gunman Adaman Lanza left their classroom, satisfied he had killed everyone in it.
By Raf Sanchez 17 December 2012 • 2:30pm
After being reunited with her mother, the little girl said: "Mummy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead", according to Rev Jim Solomon, a local pastor Credit: Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
The unnamed child was the sole of survivor of a class of 15, it emerged today, and burst from the school "covered in blood from head to toe".
As she was reunited with her distraught mother, the little girl said: "Mummy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead", according to Rev Jim Solomon, a local pastor.
Asked how the child described the killer, Rev Solomon told ABC News: "She saw someone who she felt was angry, who she felt was mad."
All 14 of her other classmates were killed, leaving police to describe how "there were 14 coats hanging there and 14 bodies".
The other six first-graders were killed as they made a desperate attempt to flee from the gunman, who was armed with a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns.
Lanza entered Victoria Soto's classroom, where the 27-year-old had hid her class in a closet. When the gunman demanded to know where they were, she tried to throw him off the track by saying they were in an auditorium at the far end of the school.
Lanza killed Soto and in the chaos six of her children seem to have burst from the closet and tried to get past him, only to be shot in the process.
Victoria Soto
Among the group killed was six-year-old Jesse Lewis.
"I wish my kid stayed put it, his father Neil Heslin told the New York Post. "But that's Jesse. I can see him making that choice and just doing something. My boy died the way I would have died if I was in that position."