A Year After Sandy Hook Shooting, Another Colorado School Shooting

Update: December 21, Colorado high school shooting victim Claire Davis dies in hospital, according to CBS Denver.

Updated: The deceased suspect of this incident has been identified as Karl Halverson Pierson, 18, who had recently been removed from the debate team.

Pierson was targeting Tracy Murphy, the school's librarian and Speech and Debate coach.

Karl, in the German form of Charles / Carl (Old German) means "free man" and Karl, from the Old English churl, means "man, serf."

Halverson is an English patronymic surname from the Old English given name Halvor, meaning firm and prudent. As always, the -son suffix indicates that the bearer was the son of Halvor, or at least someone along the line was once surnames became heriditary. Halvorson family history enters the books in 1748, when Peter Spence married Ann Halvorson at St. James Church in London. Halvorson genealogy boasts of several notable people, such as director Gary Halvorson and Papillon Airways chairman Elling Halvorson.

Pierson is a variant of Pierce (English) and Piers (Greek), and the meaning of Pierson is "rock."

Two people were reported injured on Friday the 13th of December 2013, a year after the Friday the 14th of December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Today's afternoon shooting at a suburban Denver high school left the suspect dead from a self-inflicted gunshot, according to the sheriff.

The shooting occurred at Arapahoe High School, in Centennial, Colorado. It is located 6 miles from Littleton, and is in the Littleton School District. The mascot of the high school is the Arapahoe Warrior.

One teen has a gunshot wound. Another student has an injury of unknown origin.

Police, who surrounded the school, described the scene as a "active shooter situation" until the suspect student shooter was found dead.

Students were seen calmly exiting the building single file with their hands above their hands, gathering on a school track, at about 1:30 local time.

The Denver Post said there are reports of a fire at the school, home to about 2,200 students. 

A student carrying a shotgun entered the school, and gave the name of a specific adult he was after. The alleged target was Mr. Murphy, the school librarian.

Considering this blog's attention to the name game, the copycat effect, and especially the name Aurora, this entry about Centennial from Wikipedia is intriguing:

Since the city is relatively new, many people in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area do not recognize the area by the name “Centennial,” especially since neighboring Aurora, Englewood and Littleton are assigned by the United States Postal Service as the “default” place names for the ZIP codes serving Centennial. Thus, mailing addresses in which “Aurora,” “Englewood” or “Littleton” appear may actually be in Centennial. This causes considerable confusion, as Centennial and Englewood do not even share a common boundary, while some portions of Centennial are surrounded by Aurora and vice versa.

Nearby Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, was the site of a 1999 massacre in which two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students, a teacher and wounded several others before the pair committed suicide.

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot his mother at home and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 26 people (20 children and 6 faculty and staff) before killing himself. It was the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

(H/T SM + MCC)

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Dykes Breaks: Aliens To Blame?

Fear porn. Conspiracy theories. False flag. Area 51. Hanger 18. Waco. OKC Bombing. Unabomber. Survivalists. AIDS. Watergate. Bay of Pigs. JFK. Red Dawn events. Newtown. Sandy Hook. Aurora. Lincoln's Assassination. Haymarket. 9/11 Truthers. Birthers.

It is clear a lot is going on. But...

What happened to critical thinking? How did we get here? Actually, some conspiracies are true, like Watergate and the Lincoln Assassination. Some are not. But some people on the edge have lost sight of what is what.

Black helicopters? 

No, Sheriff's helicopters.

Xeni Jardin published this on the 4th of February, "Former pilot and 9/11 conspiracy theorist shoots and kills 2 teen children, then himself."

Jardin wrote that "Philip Marshall has been identified as a former pilot for Eastern and United airlines. He self-published a number of books, including at least two about his 9/11 conspiracy theories: The Big Bamboozle (February 9, 2012) and False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-911 World (July 29, 2008)."

Meanwhile, on the 5th, in Alabama, a bus driver is dead, a Vietnam Era vet is dead, and a boy - safe today - turning 6 on the 6th - is psychological traumatized.

Charles Allen Poland

And, in the end, what is the media saying is the motive behind the abduction of Ethan?

Neighbours of [Jimmy Lee] Dykes had speculated to the media over the past week that the kidnapping was part of a plan to air certain greviences he had by gaining national prominence.
'Based on our discussions he feels like he has a story that is important to him, although it’s very complex,' said Sheriff Wally Olson of Dale County on Sunday.
Among Dykes's beliefs was that the government was harboring and hiding aliens that threatened to take America's weapons. Source.

The Alabama Hostage Ordeal: A timeline of events

Tuesday 29th January: Jimmy Lee Dykes commandeers an Alabama school bus demanding two children. Bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr refuses and is fatally shot four times by Dykes. The 65-year-old survivalist takes a 5-year-old boy named only as Ethan to his bunker.

Wednesday 30th January: After having been alerted to kidnapping and now hostage situation, Dale County Sheriff’s Department officials and agents from the FBI begin negotiations with Dkes via a ventilation shaft the gunman has attached to his underground bunker.

 

Thursday 31st January: Experts continue talking to Dykes through a pipe - the only way to contact the bunker. Local community holds candlelit vigils praying for the standoff to end peacefully
Friday 1st February: Young Ethan is said to be crying for his parents. MailOnline reports that Dykes has demanded reporter in exchange for the boy as he wants to air his views
Saturday 2nd February: Saturday: Dykes allows toys and medication to be passed on via a ventilation pipe
Sunday 3rd February: Bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr is buried amid emotional scenes as it is revealed that Dykes tricked Poland to stop his bus by promising him home-grown vegetables. It is also claimed that Dykes wants to hand over his hostage in exchange for a reporter or prime-time television exposure to tell his story.
Monday 4th February: Law enforcement officials say they are prepared to wait for weeks if not months for Dykes to give up Ethan until the situation deteriorates. Source.

  

H/T to Theo Paijmans and SMiles Lewis.

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What's Next? Beyond Newtown and the Mayan Calendar

As we all creep towards Friday, and the first week anniversary of the Newtown, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the alleged end of the Mayan calendar, it is time to pause. To look back and forward.

Counting Victims as Victims, Not Killers' Body Counts

First off, what is wrong with the general ability of people to count? Twenty-six wreaths, twenty-six candles, even twenty-six flares.

But, at Newtown, on that horrific day of violence, 28 people died. Twenty children at the school, six teachers and staff at the school, the shooter's mother at her home, and the shooter by his own hand at the school. Twenty-eight. 28. There is no reason to de-humanize Nancy Lanza and Adam Lanza by not counting them.

Adam Lanza, 20, Death #28.

Adam Lanza, sixth grade.

Bretton Woods

Breaking news today was that Adam Lanza was alone in the days leading up to the Newstown shooting, when his mother had traveled to Bretton Woods Resort, New Hampshire, to take a mini-vacation. Adam Lanza was was unsupervised for two and a half days with his mom’s guns before Friday’s massacre, according to a new report from HLN.

"Nancy Lanza had only just arrived back at her home Thursday evening, following a two-night trip to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire," according to CNN.

HLN reports "that Lanza checked into the Omni Mount Washington Resort at 12:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 11, and checked out at 12:27 p.m. on Thursday. The drive between Bretton Woods, NH and Lanza’s hometown of Newtown takes nearly five hours and clocks in at just under 300 miles."

The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one in the last surviving New Hampshire grand hotels.

The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, was recently mentioned on Olive Stone's The Untold History of the United States. Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated during 1–22 July 1944, and signed the Agreement on its final day. This historic Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that laid the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The hotel was featured in an episode of the television series Ghost Hunters, when it was searched by the TAPS paranormal investigation team on February 6, 2008. I was a guest of Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson at two TAPS conferences held at this elegant hotel, and I spoke in the same grand ballroom where the 1944 Bretton Woods conference occurred. (In 2011, George Soros convened Bretton Woods II.)

Video Games Debate...Again

How about the video games played by Adam Lanza? Over-the-top comments have been posted on the web about Lanza playing various video games nonstop. But the recent concentrated discussion of his alleged obsession with one specific game, according to my consultant CCCC, fails to take into account that "Starcraft is a strategy game and only one of the races even uses guns (the other two are insectoid and psionic). That's the media though."

Coming Copycat Incident At A Sporting Event?

My friend and research associate Jerome Clark passed along the following from Esquire's   Daily Politics Blog by Charles P. Pierce:

Since 9/11, more than a few administrators, coaches and athletes have expressed to me the concern that one of their events may be used for a statement by one of our many sociopaths with a motive, political or otherwise. (This has a little to do with the fact that so many of our athletes have armed themselves.) After all, these are people whose lives depend on regularly scheduled mass events. And, while major events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl are thick with security, the average major college football or basketball game is not, and an incident at one of those would be just as devastating. (Boeheim's teams average over 30,000 people per game.) The people involved in our games have been talking among themselves about this for years. [Syracuse coach Jim] Boeheim wasn't just talking gun policy there. He was talking about workplace violence, and good for him.

I have had similar thought. It does seem fortunate that the USA has not suffered a "Black Sunday"-type terrorist incident, to date, especially after Black Sunday appeared as a novel by Thomas Harris in 1975, and a successful film directed by John Frankenheimer in 1977.

On a smaller scale, I too have been quietly cautioning that the copycat shooters appear to be moving from school, workplace, and postal shootings to church, mall, and theater violence, then returning to school venues, often, as their captive "fishbowl" theaters of murder. These, of course, are frequently followed by the actual purpose of the shooting - the suicide or suicide-by-cop of the shooter. 

I have been aware that sporting events - baseball games, football contests, and other large audience confined stadium events - may be the next "target."

It was especially disturbing to see that in The Dark Knight Rises, it was at a football game where Bane declared the beginning of the chaos that would destroy Gotham City. And then it began there.

I have wondered if a self-fulfilling agent of the media-driven sensationalistic interest in the alleged "End of the World" on Dec. 21 will result in chaotic events on Friday, or blowback frustrated incidents on Dec. 22-23, needless to say, at sporting events, as well as other locations?

I certainly hope not, but I would warn all public safety agencies be on the alert.

Be safe, be aware.

The Copycat Effect Continues

"Suicides, murder-suicides, and murders – the events that are at the core of the most negative projections of the copycat effect -- will remain newsworthy in the eyes of the media in the foreseeable future and will continue to be reported." ~ The Copycat Effect, 2004.

Here is one of my seven recommendations in The Copycat Effect:

The media must cease its graphic and sensationalized wall-to-wall commentary and coverage of violent acts and the details of the actual methods and places where they occur. Photographs of murder victims, tapes of people jumping off bridges, and live shots of things like car chases ending in deadly crashes, for example, merely glamorize these deaths, and create models for others – down to the method, the place, the timing, and the type of individual involved. Even fictional entertainment, such as the screening of The Deer Hunter, provides vivid copycatting stimuli for vulnerable, unstable, angry, and depressed individuals.

History and Hope Again

I am not about to pick sides in a debate that appears to not understand that the solution to lessen future violent incidents like what happened at Newtown will be multifaceted. But it is intriguing to look back at another "Newtown" massacre, and see what happened.

There once was another Newtown in the news. The another New Town is on the other side of the globe. On April 28, 1996, a gunman from New Town, Australia, opened fire on tourists in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounded 23 more. It only took the government of Australia less than two week to announce a bipartisan deal to enact gun control measures. There have been no mass killings since then. Source.

The Wall Street Journal for December 18, 2012, published an article entitled, "Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown" by David Kopel. In that article that mentioned the historical context of the focus of my book:

Loren Coleman's 2004 book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines shows that the copycat effect is as old as the media itself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 classic The Sorrows of Young Werther triggered a spate of copycat suicides all over Europe. But today the velocity and pervasiveness of the media make the problem much worse.

For Critics of My Book and This Blog

In my book I spoke to the future critics who would question why I would gather a collection of copycat events:

I know that the copycat effect does not propagate well in an environment in which the hidden is made manifest. Now that we understand and know there is a problem, the protective factor is the realization that there are things that can be done to stop it.
My hope, of course, is that [my] book [and blog] might stir up a much needed debate on the subject and hopefully lead to social change, to a change in how the media handles these stories, to put the brakes on the copycat effect. Our future—our children’s future—is at stake.
It is not too late to change what is going on. In the end, the point of the copycat effect does not lie in the details of the individual incidents but in its spread....
The time has come for someone to say, stop it. Stop sensationalizing the violence. Stop triggering violent behaviors now.

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Shootings: Mayan Theater, Macy's, Newtown, Aurora, Media Madness, and Connecting the Dots

Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Sandy Hook: If it feels like the End is Near, in large part it has much to do with the fearful, the vulnerable, the suicidal-homicidal who are causing self-fulfilling End of the World prophecy events to come true. The red dawns are all around us, and awareness is important. While we must be alert, we should not live in fear.

The latest event involves a "Mayan" location, and it hardly seems coincidental.

Breaking News: Mayan theater shooting occurred late on December 16th.

Two men were transported with unknown injuries following a shooting near the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater complex late Sunday. The shooting ended with a deputy shooting the suspected gunman, confirmed Lu Antu, Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman. The shooting occurred just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Antu said the suspected shooter shot a man at nearby China Garden, located in the parking lot of the 1900 block of South West Military Drive. The shooting then moved toward the Mayan movie theater [at about 10:40 pm], where an off-duty Bexar County Sheriff's Office deputy working security saw the suspected gunman armed.
Antu said the deputy shot and hit the suspected gunman. Both shooting victims were not immediately identified by Antu. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office is the lead agency in the case, he said. Source.

Movies playing at this San Antonio Mayan theater range from Red Dawn to Playing for Keeps, from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn to The Hobbit.

With the so-called Mayan Apocalypse looming large in the week ahead, the name of this theater is hard to ignore.

Enki writes:

There has been speculation that anxiety about the upcoming Mayan "end date" has been a contributing factor to the recent rash of shootings, so it is interesting that this event ended with the gunman's being shot near the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater. The Southwest Military Drive address seems interesting, as well. Those who read my essay "An Alchemical Dawn," which Loren published on this blog last month, may recall that I mentioned the area southwest of Dallas as a place to watch. San Antonio is to the south and west of Dallas. The Santikos Mayan Palace 14 is currently showing Red Dawn.

+++

Meanwhile, the Newtown news continues, with nearly complete wall-to-wall coverage and cut-ins on television programs occurring with "breaking developments." Some old links are being developed.

Past Ponderings

"... ain't found a way to kill me yet-

yeah, they come to snuff the rooster..."

-Alice in Chains, Rooster

Connecticut (connect/cut) executed New England's first "witch," Alse Young, in 1647.

Part of the movie Adam's Rib was filmed in Newtown. Adam's Rib is a 1949 American film written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (who owned a farm in Newstown, Connecticut, used as the location for some scenes) and directed by George Cukor. The movie starts with Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) following her husband (Tom Ewell) with a gun, then seeing that he is having an affair with another woman (Jean Hagen), Attinger fires at the couple multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the arm.

Contemporary Reflections

Some are seeing events that are rather obviously linked to one another. Some are seeing the media making massive mistakes. The miscues piled up: two shooters were said to be in the school, when there was only one; the wrong name of the suspect was identified; the incorrect Ryan Lanza was named; the Lanza mother was not a kindergarten teacher at the Sandy Hook school; the number of dead was given out prematurely and was wrong; a kindergarten class was said to have been attacked, when it was a first grade class; the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle was not found in Lanza's car, but instead was next to his body and the primary weapon of the school shooting; and a growing list of mistakes were aired. The media began writing about their own media missteps (see here, here, and here).

On the ground news was making everyone jumpy too. A bomb threat called in sent a SWAT team to protect, but also, yes to invade the public sanity of local residents, anew.

Here, a SWAT team was photographed preparing to enter St Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, Newtown, which received an anonymous bomb threat during noon mass, on Sunday, December 16, 2012. Daily Mail.

Intriguingly, a new sync popped up, as mentioned in the following comment left on the Daily Mail's site:

2 Mass Shootings Connected To Libor Scandal.The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of [the alleged] Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The dots are connecting. - Abbs, Dublin, 16/12/2012 22:15

The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. Sixteen international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested.

But is this more rumors that has been elevated to "fact"? One informant tells me that Sorcha Faal is the dispenser of Holmes' father Libor info. But Faal is allegedly a disinformation agent who makes claims about several people.

If you wish to learn more about the complex Libor scandal, read the Wikipedia summary, here.

Bill Grimstad reminds us to not forget the alleged links between Aurora suspect James Holmes' father and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which has this intriguing logo:

The Dark Knight Rises Again

Also, on Sunday, images spread around the Internet that in The Dark Knight Rises (the movie central to the Aurora shootings) a map of Gotham City showed a "Sandy Hook."

AWG at RDR shared this:

From The Dark Knight Rises ... Sandy Hook reference (image shown below).
You had "Aurora" in Skyfall. Bring down the sky. Bring it down.
And pointing to "Sandy Hook" on the map he says: "...bring it down."
Falling sky.
Jared Lee Loughner said on his YouTube account: "I want you to imagine a comet or meteoroid coming through the atmosphere."

"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne."
"Batten down the hatches."
You had Superstorm Sandy.
Now "Sandy Hook" shooting.
What's the third surprise?
Is it in the lyrics of the new Bob Dylan album? 

Macy's Meanderings

On Friday, December 14, 2012, on the first Newtown posting, I wrote:

The game of Scrabble was developed in Newtown by local resident James Brunot. In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold....he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble," a real word which means "to scratch frantically." In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money.

According to legend, Scrabble's big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, "everyone had to have one."

The killer of two in this week's Clackamas shooting first ran through the Macy's store in the mall (on December 11, 2012).

Then on December 15, there were three shootings (one in a hospital and a mall parking lot in the Birmingham, Alabama; one at a mall in California) that made the national news. 

The incident in Newport, California, involved a Macy's, as noted by the LA Times:

A gunman at Fashion Island in Newport Beach apparently fired more than 50 rounds in a parking lot at the busy shopping mall Saturday before he was apprehended by police, authorities said.
Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove, was arrested in the parking lot near the Macy's department store shortly after allegedly firing the shots about 4:30 p.m., said Kathy Lowe, a spokeswoman for the Newport Beach Police Department. Officers on bike patrol apprehended Gurrola as he was standing by a white Honda.
Police searched the mall but did not find anyone who had been injured by the shots, which were apparently fired either into the air or at the ground.
More than 50 rounds from a handgun were recovered at the scene, said Deputy Chief David McGill.

It will be recalled that this year, for the first time ever, a man collapsed and died, as he was working the crowd associated with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He was a clown.

The media reported that "the clown who died performing at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was much more than a goofy guy in a costume, loved ones said. Robert Blasetti, 67, was the green thumb of his close-knit Yonkers community, and shared his produce with neighbors."

Blasetti's wife, extremely upset, was taken away after her husband collapsed.

“He was a wonderful, bighearted Teddy bear,” said Dr. Anna Dolan, a psychiatrist who had employed Blasetti as an office manager for the last 30 years.

Robert Blasetti was performing with his wife, Irene, in the Macy’s parade when he collapsed. Dolan said his death, after collapsing on Sixth Avenue at West 39th Street, was a great shock.

###

Thanks for information from Ann, Theo, RPJ, AP, Anon, Arcadia, MBell, and Enki. Thanks to Mark for reminding me of Macy's logo.

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Masks, Holmes Lexilink + List of Victims

The complete list of the victims has been released.

The Mask

Humans wear all kinds of masks: psychological ones, somatic examples, acting facades, and of course, real physical structures called "masks."

On Friday, December 14, 2012, as I noted, there occurred the "Newtown School Shooting: Killing Dawn" event.

During an interview with a Sandy Hook school parent this Saturday morning, on the television news, this woman heard that a guy dressed in all black, wearing a mask, was shooting at the school on Friday.

Then a correspondent (TP), this AM, sent an article from the UK's Globe Mail, headlined, "High school loner to cold-blooded executioner: How 'genius' honor student Adam Lanza became masked killer."

The news item noted:

Lanza is believed to have shot himself at the scene, according to the New York Times. 

He was carrying three weapons including two handguns and a rifle and was wearing a bullet-proof vest, a mask and black military gear.

Three guns were found at the scene - a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols - and a .223-caliber rifle. 

The rifle was recovered from the back of a car at the school. The two pistols were recovered from inside the school. They were legally registered to Nancy Lanza.

That article never truly followed up on their headline suggestion, for it fails to detail any description of a mask.

Update: Intriguingly, these "mask references" have been removed from the original Daily Mail article. But the "masked man" quotes remain in many sources. What's going on?

But, if Adam Lanza (Adam = English for "man," Lanza = Spanish for "spear") wore a mask, what did the mask look like?

The Holmes Lexilink

The July 20th/Aurora's alleged shooter is named James Eagan Holmes.

Today's New York Daily News had this quote:

Mother Nancy Lanza often took her kids target shooting, landscaper Dan Holmes said. 'That was a passion,' he said. 'The whole family would go together.' Her 20-year-old son Adam killed her with one of her own guns before using them to murder 20 children at the elementary school where she once worked....Holmes, who often mowed the grass at the Lanza’s sprawling Newtown home, said the doomed mom was proud of her arsenal and once showed him a “big, beautiful rifle” she had just purchased.

“She was very proud of it,” he said. “She loved her guns.” 

The Newtown Victims

Here is the complete list of victims released by the medical examiner's office (which does not include Nancy Lanza, 52, and Adam Lanza, 20). Most of those who died in the school, apparently and sadly, were killed with the .223 Remington Bushmaster (semi-automatic) rifle. New information notes that this Bushmaster was not found in Lanza's vehicle, but next to his body.

USA Today posted a gallery of photos of the victims. See here.

Children:

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Olivia Engel, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeline Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Adults:

Dawn Hochsprung, 47
Rachel Davino, 29
Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Lauren Rousseau, 30
Mary Sherlach, 56
Victoria Soto, 27

Clackamas Mask 

It will be recalled that the Clackamas mall-December 11th's alleged shooter, Jacob Tyler Roberts wore a hockey mask, also described by some as a "Jason mask."

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Newtown School Shooting: Killing Dawn

"Evil visited this community today." ~ Dan Malloy, Connecticut Governor

The sign out front says "Visitors Welcome," 

a Boston area sports news producer alerted me to, in an email.

Christopher Loring Knowles asked: "Cui bono?"  

 "To whose benefit?"

Newtown's town symbol is a rooster weather vane.

The rooster is a dawn-symbol, Matt Bell has reminded me, as this unfolded.

Anniversary: December 14, 1993, five shot, four died at Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlor. Where? Unbelievably, Colorado's (red) Aurora (dawn). Now, Newtown, same date.

A killing field took place in what appears to be another red dawn scenario on Friday, December 14, 2012. The "why" may never be answered, but it certainly will be asked often. What other questions need to be investigated?

One of the first names of the victims released is that of the Sandy Hook elementary school principal, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung.

Killed were 6 adults (including shooter's mother, principal, psychologist), 20 school children (mostly in one kindergarten class), 1 shooter, 1 other in a separate home, plus a rumor that the shooter's brother was arrested. The original Ryan Lanza information for the name of the shooter was wrong. The alleged shooter was Adam Lanza, Ryan's brother, who apparently was carrying Ryan's ids.

The 5 pm news is that Lanza's mother has been found dead at Adam's residence. Also,

A source identified the suspect in the Connecticut school shootings as Adam Lanza, and said he drove his mother's car to the school.
According to the Associated Press, a law enforcement official said 20-year-old Lanza is the son of a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where the shootings occurred. A second law enforcement official says the boy's mother, Nancy Lanza, is presumed dead.
The first official says Adam Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., is being questioned by police. An earlier report from a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names leading to the mistaken identities, the AP said.

ABC News caption:

Adam Lanza, seen here in 2005, killed his mother at her Connecticut home before killing 20 elementary school students and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, authorities said.

Gunman’s mother was teacher’s aide at school and not a teacher. 

First some information, as it is coming in...

The dead alleged shooter was reportedly dressed all in black, and said to be 20 years old.

The numbers have all changed from the initial reports below:

CBS News, MSNBC and others confirmed that 26 (27?) people are dead in the Newtown shooting. CNN is saying "closer to 30" killed. The breakdown is said to be 18 children and 8 (or 9) adults dead. Principal was reported to have been a victim. Rumors are that the shooter was from NJ until recently, 20 years old, and dressed all in black. Another report says that it may have been a parent. Two active shooters seen running down halls.

CBS reports that their reporter Jon Miller says "there is preliminary information that the gunman was the father of one of the students. Miller additionally reports the gunman is 20 years old and is from New Jersey."

CNN is saying the alleged shooter's name is Ryan Lanza.

Lanza means "land." As PPJ points out in a comment below, in Spanish, Lanza means "spear" or "lance."

MSNBC: Shooter: Ryan Lanza, 23. Apparently a body was found in Lanza's Hoboken New Jersey home; his mother was a Sandy Hook ES teacher, she's dead.

The Lanzas lived on Yogananda Street, apparently.

Others are reporting that the girlfriend and a friend of suspect Ryan Lanza are missing in New Jersey. 

The body count increased as the day moved along.

Earlier, other news developed,

A law enforcement official in Washington said the attacker was a 20-year-old man with ties to the school and that one of the guns was a .223-caliber rifle. The official also said that New Jersey State Police were searching a location in that state in connection with the shootings. That official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation. It is not known whether the shooter took his own life or was killed.
“The shooter is deceased inside the building,” State Police Lt. Paul Vance said during a press conference, adding that the scene is secure.
CBS News reports that a potential second shooter is in custody and that SWAT is now investigating the home of the suspect.
A witness tells WFSB-TV that a second man was taken out of the woods in handcuffs wearing a black jacket and camouflage pants and telling parents on the scene, “I did not do it.”

The first law enforcement news conference held gave no information out on numbers or who, other other than a shooter was found dead inside the building. Indeed, the incorrect reportage and chase to dig out more and more informants and internet information could have been derailed with a little bit more "rumor control" in Newtown with more factual, detailed data.

Even earlier....

Several people, including children, may have been killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources said.

One report said as many as 20 students may have been shot. One report says, "More that two dozen have been shot [killed?] and 14 children are dead."

However, the number of victims is unclear.

Recent accounts tell of only one shooter, who is deceased, at the Newtown school shooting. The suspect is said to have had two guns. Initially, there were unconfirmed reports of two shooters — one dead, one still at large. (For breaking news of an attack on school children in China, refer to details at the bottom.)

Several people are reported injured in a reported school shooting in Connecticut. Eyewitnesses say that a teacher and a student were seen being carried out of the school. One report says a teacher was hit in the foot. A local hospital is reporting three injured have been admitted to that facility.

Shortly after 9:40 a.m., on Friday, December 14, 2012, police reported that a shooter was in the main office of the school. A person in one room had “numerous gunshot wounds,” police said. Other reports tell of two shooters. One shooter, as noted, was reported dead.

Connecticut State Police say they are assisting local police in Newtown amid reports of a shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, 12 Dickinson Drive, a kindergarten through fourth grade school, in Newtown, in western Connecticut.

The school superintendent's office says the district has locked down schools to ensure the safety of students and staff. (In an earlier dispatch, the superintendent's secretary, Kathy June, says reports of a shooting are not confirmed. I think we can overlook that report, now.)

State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance says they have a number of personnel on the scene to assist.

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Newtown's rooster weathervane in 1915.

Some info on Newtown: The town's symbol, the town's seal, is a rooster weathervane. The rooster weathervane located atop the meeting house is said to have been used as a target by French soldiers encamped there in 1781 during the Revolutionary War. Symbolically, the rooster is significant. The oldest rooster vane in existence is the cock of Brescia, Italy from 820 A. D. It is believed that around this time, the pope decreed each catholic church would bear a cock as a reminder of Peter on the Cavalry: "In this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times" (The Bible, Matthew 26: 34).

In Connecticut (Federal Writers' Project, page 376, 1938), the rooster weathervane, which became part of the town's seal, is also called a weathercock.

The (Red) Dawn Symbol: Matt Bell pointed out this link to me, and this related info:

I noticed your mention of the rooster/cock.
The rooster/cock is straightforwardly a twilight-symbol. The cock presides over the the liminal period between night and day.
"Gallum nutrias quidem, non tamen sacrifices. Lune enim ac soli dedicatus est." (Nourish the cock, but do not sacrifice him, since he is sacred to [both] the sun and the moon.) ~ Pythagoras (Quoted in: Christopher S. Celenza, "Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino," Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), p. 695.)
The cock is a herald of the dawn (Eos/Aurora): "As a symbol of the dawning light, the cock is nonetheless the especial attribute of Apollo, the hero of the dawning day" (Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of Symbols [London: Penguin, 1996], p. 209). The cock has this function in many religious systems including, without limitation, ancient Greco-Roman mythologies, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, and numerous forms of animism (Ibid., pp. 209-212). It functions, like Hermes-Mercury as a psychopompos (a "guide, conductor" of souls).
"[T]he cock on top of the weathervane on a church...may be regarded as the guard and protector of life" (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, supra., p. 210). The cock, along with the Ibis of Thoth (another Herme-Mercury associated deity), has "...the gift of foreknowledge...the cock announces that darkness has vanished and light has come. Thus the bird is set on church spires and cathedral towers and this positioning on the highest points of holy buildings...may suggest the heavenly origins of the inner light which brings salvation [in the Gnostic-Hermetic sense - MJB] and the watchfulness of the soul to catch the first gleams of the spirit dawning in the closing shades of night" (Ibid., p. 211).
As if that were not enough, "[t]o alchemists the cock symbolizes the three stages through which the 'work' must pass, through his black claws, to his white feathers and his red comb", (Ibid.). Finally, the cock is a symbol, in Freemasonry, "of vigilance and of the enlightenment which comes through initiation" (Ibid., p. 212). "[O]n the wall [of many Masonic Lodges] hangs the image of a cock, hourglass and scythe. The cock was sacred to the god Mercury (Hermes)..." Masonic Papers by R.W.Bro. Leon Zeldis, "The Initiation in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite."

Also, Bell emailed later,

Additionally, since a poster mentioned the word "spear," and since the cock is linked with the dawn-god, Apollo, it is noteworthy that Apollo is also linked with spears (along with Athena). The (phallic) spear is another sun-symbol. Also, although it's both obvious and delicate, the word "cock" has taken on a dual sense as both rooster and phallus (or spear). Hence, the symbol complex includes both solar and sexual emblems.

Phallic Symbolism: The underlying coded phallic messages of the rooster weathervane or weathercock is reinforced greatly in this sphere.

CS writes that all of this certainly makes him "think of phallic symbolism. Guns are a

phallic analogue, the modern day wand. Back when I was exploring chaos magick, some chaotes were using a gun instead of a wand/sword. In tarot symbolism, a wand is always in the shape of a thrysus bringing us back to the original symbolism. Swords ought to be obvious without delving into crudity."

Let us remember that "Adam Lanza" literally translates as Man-Spear, as M. Bell reminded me.

One of the highest points of land (lanza/land/spear) in the area is called Snake Hill, another strongly phallic connotation underlying that name.

Other early history: One section of Newtown today is Dodgingtown. It was named thusly as it was "a crossroads hamlet named for the many drovers, horse-traders, and peddlers 'on the dodge,' who congregated at the crossroad taverns," Connecticut, Federal Writers' Project, page 375, 1938.

"Purchased from the Indians in 1705, named 'New Town,' incorporated in 1711, the area soon attracted settlers from near-by towns. Although notorious for its Tory leanings during the Revolution, Newtown entertained both Rochambeau and Lafayette," Connecticut, Federal Writers' Project, page 376, 1938.

Film location: Newtown is home to the "Fairfield Hills" Hospital, erected in the 1930s. It was closed in 1995. Fairfield Hills was used as the set of the juvenile facility in the film Sleepers in 1995.

Distant Clackamas-Newton (Lexi)Link: The game of Scrabble was developed in Newtown by local resident James Brunot. In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the "premium" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble," a real word which means "to scratch frantically." In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money.

According to legend, Scrabble's big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, "everyone had to have one."

The killer of two in this week's Clackamas shooting first ran through the Macy's store in the mall (on December 11, 2012).

Other lexilink factoids:

Sandy Hook [New Jersey] is a former Nike missile base that was turned into a Federal park on the Jersey Shore. It also has the state's only nudist beach (from Christopher Loring Knowles).

Superstorm Sandy hooked left and came ashore right near Sandy Hook, New Jersey (from Matty B Goode).

This school attack took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Not New Jersey, of course. The lexilink to that New Jersey site and hurricane is found in the name of the school and to Sandy Hook, Connecticut, which is the next town over from Newtown.

Flashback: Loren "Coleman says [shooters], 

intent on shocking the public, 'compete for 

the highest body count.'"

CTV News, Oct. 3, 2006.

Meanwhile,

On Thursday, December 13, 2012, in China, which is being reported on Friday, December 14, 2012, an attack on an elementary school occurred there.

Zee News is noting:

The dreaded attacks on school children returned to haunt China on Thursday after 22 of them were injured besides an 85-year-old woman after a "mentally deranged" man, armed with a knife, went on a slashing spree at a primary school.
Armed with a knife Min Yingjun, 36, attacked group of children at the gate of a primary school in central China's Henan Province setting off panic in the village. The woman and most of the injured students suffered head wounds.
Some of them were in shock, according to the People's Hospital of the county, which received most of the people injured in the attack.
All the injured people have been sent to three local hospitals and at least two of them, one student and an 85-year-old woman, are in serious condition, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The attack took place this morning at the entrance of Chenpeng Village Primary School in Wenshu Township of Guangshan County in the city of Xinyang....

Thanks for heads up from many people, especially to Anonymous, Robert Schneck, SMiles, Brizdazz (Darren) for the China news, posted above.
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My deepest condolences to all the parents, relatives, and loved ones who has lost anyone to the senseless shootings in Oregon, Connecticut, Colorado, and anywhere else this week and in the days and years before today.

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