USA/FILE: Bells ring in Newtown six months after Sandy Hook school shootings

Record ID: 324688

  • Title: USA/FILE: Bells ring in Newtown six months after Sandy Hook school shootings
  • Date: 14th June 2013
  • Summary: NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT, UNITED STATES (JUNE 14, 2014) (REUTERS) BELLS RINGING AT NEWTOWN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH TO MARK THE SIX-MONTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING
  • Embargoed: 29th June 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime,General
  • Reuters ID: LVA56LB9ZRV484DMJ1CGUWB59R47
  • Story Text: Six months after a gunman killed 26 children and adults at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, church bells rung to honor the victims of the shooting on Friday (June 14).
    At the Newtown Congregational Church bells rung at 0930 EDT (1330 GMT) for several minutes on the cloudy, overcast day.
    Shortly after the church bells a moment of silence was held at a ceremony attended by families and local officials.
    Jillian Soto, who lost her sister Victoria Soto, a first-grade teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, led the silence.

    "Although it's been six months, we have not forgotten and we will never forget the ones who have died. This pain is excruciating and unbearable but thanks to people like you that come out to support us we are able to get through this," said Soto.
    The event, which was organized as a call for renewing the fight for stricter gun control, featured the lighting of a lantern in honor of all those killed across the country in gun violence since the Sandy Hook tragedy.
    Ed Edelson, a First Selectman from the nearby town of Southbury, then started reading names of those killed in gun violence in the U.S. since Sandy Hook.
    Gun control advocates have been urging Congress to revive a series of gun-control initiatives proposed after the Newtown shooting. The measures, which were opposed by the National Rifle Association gun rights lobby, failed to win approval in Congress.
    On the morning of Dec. 14, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, in her bed, and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School - a school he once attended - and forced his way inside. He killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself.
    The massacre, which followed a shooting rampage at a Colorado movie theater in July that killed 12, and a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that killed seven, was one of the worst in recent American history.
    Ultimately, a bill that would have expanded the use of background checks in gun purchases failed in Congress and an assault weapons ban was proposed but never brought to a vote.
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