Victoria Soto, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook elementary school has been hailed a hero after reportedly hiding her pupils in cabinets, saving all of their lives.

Victoria Soto, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook elementary school has been hailed a hero after reportedly hiding her pupils in cabinets, saving all of their lives. 

The 27-year-old then faced the shooter, Adam Lanza, and told him all of her pupils were in the gym. Lanza turned the gun on the teacher and shot her dead

So sad is life to us that we loose our loved ones in such a way ...so hard to even to imagine the scene of that classroom where all this happened ... she is not there any more ...... she saved her classroom pupils ...she will always live through them for the years to come.


Victoria Soto and co-teacher Anne Marie Murphy join their first-grade students in an official class photo taken last fall. Those labeled were gunned down in the Dec. 14 massacre, while the others survived thanks to Soto’s herois

They are the children she saved — and the tragic lives she couldn’t.

Before a mad gunman did the unthinkable, they were just your typical first-graders posing for an official class photo last fall.

“This is Victoria Soto’s class,” said Shannon Engel, the mother of slain 6-year-old Olivia Engel, holding back tears as she looked at the image.

Olivia and her classmates are pictured smiling with their teacher and protector, Soto, 27, who was killed trying to protect the students from Adam Lanza.

Fellow teacher Anne Marie Murphy, 52, also pictured, was slain as well. She was said to have been found with her arms around one of the slain children.

With Lanza cutting his murderous path through Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Soto hid her students in a classroom closet and cabinets — and put herself between them and the killer.

When Lanza entered the room, after killing 14 children in the classroom next door, she tried to steer him away by saying her students were in the auditorium.

But a handful of students, including Olivia, tried to flee. Lanza shot them.

In the photo are Soto’s other fallen students — Dylan Hockley, Allison Wyatt, Jesse Lewis, Avielle Richman, all 6 years old.

But because of Soto’s heroic actions, most of her little students survived the horror.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/heartbreaking_smiles_ms_soto_class_mIAtV7NpFzD81i36jbTcvK