Tragedy Revisited As Sandy Hook Advisory Commission Releases Interim Report
HARTFORD, Conn (CBSNewYork) -- The madman who shot up Sandy Hook Elementary School had a detailed plan and he executed it.
New and disturbing details of the investigation and the methodical way the gunman went about gunning down 20 children and six adults were released Monday, CBS 2's Lou Young reported.
The scars are still evident in Newtown -- from the shuttered house the killer lived in to the fenced off school he used as a killing field. The road leading to Sandy Hook Elementary remains closed as a security guard stands watch. It has been three months since the unthinkable happened and still the guard told CBS 2's Alice Gainer every day people from all over the country come by.
"I just wanted to come and pay my respects in the way that I could," said Sara Elmer of Boston.
EXTRA: Click Here For The Full Report
Small memorials near the school remain but elsewhere in town they've been removed as the community tries to move forward. That's not easy for the families of victims, especially when new information surfaces about the gunman.
"We lost a loved one and many families that day lost loved ones. Unfortunately, this doesn't really help," said Jim Wiltsie.
Wiltsie is the cousin of teacher Victoria Soto, who was shot and killed trying to protect her students. He's also in law enforcement and said Connecticut State Police have done a good job of keeping families updated on the investigation.
But they weren't told about just how detailed gunman Adam Lanza allegedly was. The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission's findings and recommendations in the wake of Lanza's massacre have re-opened wounds that weren't even close to healed.
Lanza, it seems, viewed Sandy Hook Elementary School as a video game, and that the children were easy points, CBS 2's Young reported. His meticulous research of earlier mass killings was laid out on a seven-foot long spreadsheet.
It was yet another sorrow for victims' families.
The news came on the same day the advisory panel on the massacre delivered its first report to Gov. Dannel Malloy.
"We didn't look at it from a political framework," advisory commission member Terry Edelstein said.
"We believe there are common sense principles upon which short-term change is possible and action should be taken," Chairman Scott Jackson said in the letter to the governor.
There are daunting recommendations in the report, which include: limiting magazine capacity for civilian weapons to 10 rounds, banning the sale of guns capable of accepting larger clips, ending Internet sale of guns and ammo, limiting the amount of ammo one person can buy and instituting a universal registration for gun owners before they can buy ammo.
"There was solid consensus in limiting the amount of bullets that would be allowed. If you can limit the magazine capacity and the number of shots that can be fired, that's one way to control the potential safety factors," Edelstein said.
In addition, the commission recommended that all classrooms in K-12 schools be equipped with doors that can be locked from the inside and that all exterior doors have hardware capable of implementing a full perimeter lockdown.
Jackson said the panel will "continue our efforts" to "learn from state officials, experts or practitioners, concerned advocates."
The governor's advisory panel will next move from guns and school safety to mental health, which is the hardest part of the equation to address.
The panel's final report is due at the end of the year.
Please share your thoughts below...
