Saturday, December 22, 2012

Jessica Redfield: Late Night Thoughts on the Eaton Center Shooting

0 comments

 I can’t get this odd feeling out of my chest. This empty, almost sickening feeling won’t go away. I noticed this feeling when I was in the Eaton Center in Toronto just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court. An odd feeling which led me to go outside and unknowingly out of harm‘s way. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a weird feeling saved me from being in the middle of a deadly shooting.
What started off as a trip to the mall to get sushi and shop, ended up as a day that has forever changed my life. I was on a mission to eat sushi that day, and when I’m on a mission, nothing will deter me. When I arrived at the Eaton Center mall, I walked down to the food court and spotted a sushi restaurant. Instead of walking in, sitting down and enjoying sushi, I changed my mind, which is very unlike me, and decided that a greasy burger and poutine would do the trick. I rushed through my dinner. I found out after seeing a map of the scene, that minutes later a man was standing in the same spot I just ate at and opened fire in the food court full of people. Had I had sushi, I would’ve been in the same place where one of the victims was found.
My receipt shows my purchase was made at 6:20 pm. After that purchase I said I felt funny. It wasn’t the kind of funny you feel after spending money you know you shouldn’t have spent. It was almost a panicky feeling that left my chest feeling like something was missing. A feeling that was overwhelming enough to lead me to head outside in the rain to get fresh air instead of continuing back into the food court to go shopping at SportChek. The gunshots rung out at 6:23. Had I not gone outside, I would’ve been in the midst of gunfire.
I walked around the outside of the mall. People started funneling out of every exit. When I got back to the front, I saw a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck. I initially thought that maybe the street performer that was drumming there earlier had a heart attack or something. But more and more police officers, ambulances, and fire trucks started showing up. Something terrible has happened. I overheard a panicked guy say, “There was a shooting in the food court.” I thought that there was no way, I was just down there. I asked him what happened. He said “Some guy just opened fire. Shot about 8 shots. It sounded like balloons popping. The guy is still on the loose.” I’m not sure what made me stick around at this point instead of running as far away from the mall as possible. Shock? Curiosity? Human nature? Who knows.
Standing there in the midst of the chaos all around us, police started yelling to get back and make room. I saw a young shirtless boy, writhing on a stretcher, with his face and head covered by the EMS as they rushed him by us to get him into an ambulance. The moment was surprisingly calm. The EMTs helping the boy weren’t yelling orders and no one was screaming like a night time medical drama. It was as if it was one swift movement to get the boy out of the mall and into the ambulance. That’s when it really hit me. I felt nauseas. Who would go into a mall full of thousands of innocent people and open fire? Is this really the world we live in?
Police start yelling again “GET BACK NOW!” Another stretcher came rushing out of the mall. I saw a man on a stretcher, the blanket underneath him spotted with blood. Multiple gunshot holes in his chest, side, and neck were visible. It’s not like in the movies when you see someone shot and they’re bleeding continuously from the wound. There was no blood flowing from the wounds, I could only see the holes. Numerous gaping holes, as if his skin was putty and someone stuck their finger in it. Except these wounds were caused by bullets. Bullets shot out of hatred. His dark skin on his torso was tinted red with what I assume was his own blood. He was rushed into the ambulance and taken away.
More people joined the crowd at the scene and asked what happened. “There was a shooting in the food court,” kept being whispered through the crowd like a game of telephone. I was standing near a security guard when I heard him say over his walkie talkie, “One fatality.” At this point I was convinced I was going to throw up. I’m not an EMT or a police officer. I’m not trained to handle crime and murder. Gun crimes are fairly common where I grew up in Texas, but I never imagined I’d experience a violent crime first hand. I’m on vacation and wanted to eat and go shopping. Everyone else at the mall probably wanted the same thing. I doubt anyone left for the mall imagined they witness a shooting.
I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath. For one man, it was in the middle of a busy food court on a Saturday evening.
I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.
I feel like I am overreacting about what I experienced. But I can’t help but be thankful for whatever caused me to make the choices that I made that day. My mind keeps replaying what I saw over in my head. I hope the victims make a full recovery. I wish I could shake this odd feeling from my chest. The feeling that’s reminding me how blessed I am. The same feeling that made me leave the Eaton Center. The feeling that may have potentially saved my life.

Children of Newtown: strict gun control means fewer people die.

0 comments

    • The Guardian
    • Jump to comments (373)
Activists Protest Supreme Court Decision On Corporate Political Spending
Protesters against the supreme court decision on corporate political spending roll up a giant version of the US constitution, the 'most powerful statement of democratic principle … ever written'. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
We watch their movies, we eat their fast food. Their culture has become global culture. So it always comes as a shock to realise how different Americans are from everyone else. The massacre in Newtown horrified even those who thought themselves inured to horror – I know many who could hardly bear to look at those smiling family photographs of the children – but for non-Americans the subsequent discussion has also been shocking to watch.

Adam Lanza : Ended up killing 20 innocent kids and 7 adults no one knows what made him do so.

0 comments
Former schools security chief Richard Novia, who knew the Newtown gunman, Adam Lanza, reveals some details about the killer's life Link to this video
This weekend the name of Adam Peter Lanza was added to what is becoming a distinctly American list – a catalogue of young men who shot their way from small town obscurity to infamy by carrying out the mass killing of other young people.
In the desperate scramble to name the perpetrator who forced his way into a Connecticut school on Friday and shot dead 20 children, the family and friends of the Lanza family were rooted out through their social media pages and old-fashioned door knocking, with even 20-year-old Lanza's father, Peter, hearing about the shootings from a local paper reporter as he drove home.
At first police named Ryan Lanza, 24, Adam's brother, as the shooter, leading to a flurry of denials by him on social networking sites as he left his job at Ernst & Young in Times Square, and headed to the New Jersey house he shares with two friends. Ryan, who left the family home for university in 2006, wrote on Facebook: "Fuck you CNN it wasn't me." He posted: "I'm on the bus home now it wasn't me." His panicking friends were deluged by calls and messages.
Ryan Lanza has been helping police with their investigation and US media reported that he told them he had not seen his brother since 2010. But it became clear it was Adam Lanza who had shot his mother, Nancy, at the home they shared on Friday morning, then driven her car to the Sandy Hook elementary school five miles away. He forced his way in and shot dead 20 children, six adults and then himself.
The law enforcement official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between Nancy Lanza and the school.
Lanza's place in the high school year book of Newtown high for 2010 held no photograph, only the words "camera shy".
An honours student, he was a thin, awkward but bright boy who seemed socially uncomfortable. With retrospect some of his then classmates have said perhaps he had autism or Asperger's syndrome – that is what has been reported in local media to be what his brother has told the police. Lanza had no criminal record and no history of his causing trouble in the past, either at school or in his affluent neighbourhood of Newtown, some 90 miles from New York City. Some of his former classmates had trouble remembering anything about him at all.
Joshua Milas, who graduated from Newtown high school in 2009, said Adam Lanza was generally a happy person but that he had not seen him in a few years.
"We would hang out, and he was a good kid. He was smart," Milas said. "He was probably one of the smartest kids I know. He was probably a genius."
They talk of a boy who dressed smartly and worked hard, but who barely said a word during his time at school and made few friends. Intelligent but shy and nervous, most said. A former classmate, Olivia DeVivo, told the New York Times: "I never saw him with anyone. I can't even think of one person that was associated with him."
He had no Facebook page and his electronic footprint was minimal although yesterday the police chief seemed to suggest he may have left behind emails which could help explain his state of mind.
Nancy and Peter Lanza, a tax director for General Electric, separated in 2006, divorced in 2009 and Peter remarried in 2011. A neighbour who claimed to have babysat for Adam said the divorce had "hit him hard".
State police records show Nancy Lanza had bought five guns. Yesterday police said they were still investigating the origins of weapons used by her son.
Nancy's sister-in-law, Marsha Lanza, told AP her nephew had been raised by kind, nurturing parents, who would not have hesitated to seek counselling for their son if he needed it.
She was close to Lanza's mother whom she described as a "good mother and kind-hearted". Marsha Lanza said her husband saw Adam as recently as June and recalled nothing out of the ordinary about him.
• This article was amended on 19 December to make it clear that Marsha Lanza was sister-in-law to Nancy Lanza, not sister.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/16/adam-lanza-quiet-friendless-boy

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The names and birth dates of the victims

0 comments
FULL COVERAGE: Latest developments in shooting
All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children who were shot to death, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were ages 6 or 7.
The names and birth dates of the victims:
Charlotte Bacon (2/22/06), 6 years old, female
Daniel Barden (9/25/05), 7 years old, male
Rachel Davino (7/17/83), Staff member, 29 years old, female
Olivia Engel (7/18/06), 6 years old, female
Josephine Gay (12/11/05), 7 years old, female
Ana M. Marquez-Greene (4/4/06), 6 years old, female
Dylan Hockley (3/8/06), 6 years old, male
Dawn Hochsprung (6/28/65), Principal, 47 years old, female
Madeleine F. Hsu (7/10/06), 6 years old, female
Catherine V. Hubbard (6/8/06), 6 years old, female
Chase Kowalski (10/31/05), 7 years old, male
Nancy Lanza, 52 years old, female (mother of shooter Adam Lanza)
Jesse Lewis (6/30/06), 6 years old, male
James Mattioli (03/22/06), 6 years old, male
Grace McDonnell (11/4/05), 7 years old, female
Anne Marie Murphy (7/25/60), Staff member, 52 years old, female
Emilie Parker (05/12/06), 6 years old, female
Jack Pinto (05/05/06), 6 years old, male
Noah Pozner (11/20/06), 6 years old, male
Caroline Previdi (9/07/06), 6 years old, female
Jessica Rekos (5/10/06), 6 years old, female
Avielle Richman (11/17/06) 6 years old, female
Lauren Rousseau (June 1982), Staff member, 30 years old, female
Mary Sherlach (2/11/56), Staff member, 56 years old, female
Victoria Soto (11/04/85), Staff member, 27 years old, female
Benjamin Wheeler (09/12/06), 6 years old, male








Allison N. Wyatt (07/03/06), 6 years old, female

Vidya Balan Siddharth Roy Kapur

0 comments


The name of victims:Sandy Hook Elementary School

0 comments

The victims

Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female (age 6)
Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male (age 7)
Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female (age 6)
Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female (age 7)
Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female (age 6)
Dylan Hockley, 03/08/06, male (age 6)
Madeleine F. Hsu, 07/10/06, female (age 6)
Catherine V. Hubbard, 06/08/06, female (age 6)
Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male (age 7)
Jesse Lewis, 06/30/06, male (age 6)
James Mattioli, 03/22/06, male (age 6)
Grace McDonnell, 11/04/05, female (age 7)
Emilie Parker, 05/12/06, female (age 6)
Jack Pinto, 05/06/06, male (age 6)
Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male (age 6)
Caroline Previdi, 09/07/06, female (age 6)
Jessica Rekos, 05/10/06, female (age 6)
Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female (age 6)
Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male (age 6)
Allison N. Wyatt, 07/03/06, female (age 6)


Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/sandy-hook-heroine-victoria-soto-and-colleagues-saved-many-lives-as-the-killer-adam-lanza-struck-16251118.html#ixzz2FD7KGM9z

"Sunny Leone" most googled celeb in India

0 comments
Porn star Sunny Leone has been crowned Indias most googled celebrity, beating Bollywood divas Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

US shooting: "Victoria Soto" Teacher who lied protecting children

0 comments
Above: Victoria Soto. Victoria's cousin, Jim Wiltsie, a police officer, said the 27?year?old died trying to shield her pupils.

One of the teachers killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was killed after hiding some children and then lying to the gunman that they were elsewhere in the school.
Investigators told the family of Victoria Soto that she was killed while shielding her pupils.
Anne Amato from the Connecticut Post explains what is believed to have happened.

Followers

About Me

 

WORLD_AROUND_US. Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved Revolution Two Church theme by Brian Gardner Converted into Blogger Template by Bloganol dot com