Andrea Peyser
Unspeakable.
There are no words. Just after 9:30 yesterday morning, as tiny kids settled in from breakfast to learn their ABCs and 123s in a precious elementary school in this town straight out of Mayberry, childhood ended.
Forever.
“I was scared!’’ wailed an 8-year-old as he hugged his mom leading him away from Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The child was among the lucky ones.
He did not die.
The boy still has time to learn the meaning of the word death. A word no baby should have to know.
Evil visited the bucolic town on a morning that started out routinely. Classes were just beginning. Students sat at miniature desks or on the floor in circles, still wiping sleep from their eyes.
AP
AWAY TO SAFETY: A police officer helps lead two women and a child from yesterday’s massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. When word of the gunfire spread, parents frantically rushed to the school in the bucolic town.
And that’s when demented gunman Adam Lanza, 20, dressed all in black and armed to the teeth with two handguns, walked silently and methodically into the school he once attended. After shooting the principal and a teacher, he made his way toward the kindergarten classroom where his mother, Nancy, had taught.
And for reasons known only to the devil, he opened fire.
Hundreds of times, said a woman who dialed 911.
It was beyond overkill. A horror movie. These kids were utterly and completely defenseless.
Why?
The lost children were ages 5 through 10 — young, innocent and completely blameless.
Some of the tiny victims were from kindergarten, looking forward to Christmas. Enjoyoing Hanukkah. Curious about the great gift of life. Barely out of diapers.
So young.
Lanza shot indiscriminately, coldly and cruelly.
Eighteen children died immediately. Two more succumbed to their wounds after arriving at Danbury Hospital.
He also took the lives of six adults at the school and one nearby. Finally, the carnage ended when he turned the gun on himself.
For hours, frantic parents took the long, slow drive to the school where they’d earlier dropped off their children.
One 8-year-old girl, reunited with her parents at a nearby firehouse, said she heard “two big bangs’’ that she didn’t recognize as gunfire.
Another boy was told the unimaginable truth. His younger sister was among the dead.
Children told how teachers heroically pushed them inside classrooms and locked the doors.
“I thought the custodian knocked something down,’’ said a little girl, Alexis. “I thought someone was kicking the door.”
“Get to a safe place!’’ a teacher yelled, according to a 9-year-old. Calm and quick-thinking, teachers prevented panic. Most of the kids didn’t even realize what had happened until they had made it safely outside.
“I ran as fast as I could, Mommy!’’ said a child who did not yet comprehend what had happened.
The parents milled in and out of the firehouse. Many emerged in smiles, hugging their children as if they had earlier thought they’d never see them again.
Others emerged in grief-stricken tears. Their children were not coming home.
This pretty town, where so many moved to escape urban crime to raise their children in peace, is irretrievably broken.
At a convenience store. At a liquor store. Everyone knows everyone. No one is unscathed.
In coming days we will hear a lot about the gun insanity that has gripped the nation. Now it has struck an affluent town within commuting distance of Manhattan. And 27 children and adults, plus one gunman, are dead.
Why did a madman have access to deadly weapons?
The insanity truly can happen anywhere. And it will happen again. And again.
As a mother, and as a human being, I am so afraid.
Get the guns off the streets.
The next murdered child might be your own.
apeyser@nypost.com
