Sandy Hook Promise Speaks Out After Painful Details of Shooting Report are Released

Press release:

NEWTOWN, CT. –Sandy Hook Promise had this to say today in response to the release of the CT Office of the Child Advocate Report on the Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

“The recent report released from the CT Office of the Child Advocate on the “Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School” has been incredibly painful to read. While many questions remain unanswered about the shooters motivation to attack and kill so many children and educators at our elementary school, what pains us most is to realize how truly preventable this tragedy was.

The CT Child Advocate’s report makes it clear that there were real failures by the shooters parents, school officials and mental health officials to coordinate on identification of mental health issues, and to coordinate care around those issues.

It is an issue we care deeply about at Sandy Hook Promise, where we focus on educating and empowering parents to implement community-based gun violence prevention programs and tools in the areas of mental health & wellness identification and intervention, social & emotional development, community connectedness and firearm safety & access in order to protect children from gun violence. Our plan is to give other parents and communities the tools to ensure that positive interventions are made to help prevent future tragedies.

Though we feel the report confirms that the approach we are taking at Sandy Hook Promise is correct and will make a difference in preventing other tragedies and loss, we despair that our own tragedy was not prevented. There are so many places where it seems like good intervention might have made a significant difference and saved lives.

As we near the two-year remembrance, we must learn from the recommendations in this report, and recommit ourselves to making sure that no other families or communities have to suffer through this kind of preventable, senseless loss.”

About Sandy Hook Promise

Sandy Hook Promise, based in Newtown, Connecticut, is led by several families who lost loved ones in the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The organization engages and empowers parents and communities with prevention programs designed to protect children from gun violence in the areas of mental health & wellness, social development, community connectedness, bystander behavior and firearm safety & access. To learn more about the organization and Make the Promise to protect children from gun violence, go towww.sandyhookpromise.org. Sandy Hook Promise is a non-profit corporation, with a 501c(3) Foundation and 501c(4) Action Fund.

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