When Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle and two handguns, principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, did not cower. The dedicated educator charged out of the school office, confronted Lanza in the hallway, and was gunned down as she lunged at him. “I’m not surprised she gave her life in this fashion, trying to protect her students,” said a friend, Gerald Stomski. As Lanza advanced toward classrooms, he was also confronted by vice principal Natalie Hammond and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, who planned to retire at the end of the year. Hammond was wounded in the leg; Sherlach was killed.
“Someone had flicked on the loudspeaker,” said the Los Angeles Times, “and the sounds staffers heard clearly were not part of a drill.” Teachers scrambled to save the children. Music teacher Maryrose Kristopik quickly put 20 kids in a large closet and blocked her classroom’s door with a xylophone. Kaitlin Roig ushered her first-graders into the class bathroom and implored them to be quiet. As she heard the gunman outside, she made a point of saying that she loved them. “I wanted that to be one of the last things they heard,” she told ABC News, “not the gunfire in the hallway.” He passed them by.
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