Mementos for 20 students and six educators, killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, are seen on a tree in Newtown, Connecticut. For a second straight year the leafy suburb has planned no public events to commemorate the massacre at the elementary school.
Reuters
The families of nine people killed in an attack on a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school in 2012 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit yesterday against the company that manufactured the gun used in the attack, the Hartford Courant reported.
The suit named gunmaker Bushmaster, a distributor and the local retailer that sold the weapon used by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in a December 14, 2012, attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Families of nine victims and a 10th person who was wounded filed the suit in state court, the Courant reported.
Bushmaster did not respond to a request for comment.
While the parents could not be reached for comment, a spokesman for Bridgeport law firm Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder said on Sunday that a lawyer at the firm had recently met with some of the Newtown parents about potential suits.
“Attorney Josh Koskoff has met with parents about legal action,” said Geraldo Parrilla, a legal assistant with the firm.
Lanza, who began the shooting spree by killing his mother at their home, ended his rampage by turning his gun on himself as he heard police approaching.
On Sunday residents of Newtown gathered at a somber prayer service to remember the victims in one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
The town, located some 126km northeast of New York City, did not hold any official event to commemorate the massacre.
There were no formal events last year either.
“We refuse to give in to violence that shattered our dreams that day,” Reverend Matthew Crebbin of the Newtown Congregational Church told about 200 people at the historical Newtown Meeting House, including US Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Members of the clergy said they were not aware of any relatives of the victims having attended the service, which was sponsored by the Newtown Interfaith Clergy Association.
In addition, there were candlelight vigils across Connecticut over the weekend.
In Fairfield on Sunday, about 30 people gathered in a small church to remember the victims.
“We will continue fighting to prevent these kinds of evil acts in the future,” US Representative Jim Himes told the congregants, each of whom was holding a white candle.
The massacre inflamed a national debate over gun control and raised the prospect of a wave of lawsuits by the families of the first graders who were killed.
Despite the outrage that followed the Newtown massacre, school shootings remain common across the United States.
Some 95 incidents, including fatal and non-fatal assaults, suicides and unintentional shootings have occurred in 33 states since the Newtown massacre, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
The group was created by the merger of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, founded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Mums Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group founded after the Newtown shootings.
“It’s astounding,” said Shannon Watts, who founded the Mums Demand Action group. “There is no other developed country that would tolerate this kind of gun violence around school-age children.”
Gun-rights advocates note that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects the right to bear arms and suggested after the Newtown attack that armed guards in schools could avert future violence.
Newtown has razed the school that was site of the attack. It recently acquired the home where Lanza lived with his mother, who he shot dead before the rampage. That building may also be torn down.
The 12-member Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission is planning a permanent memorial to honour the dead.
“We are meeting monthly, but have taken December off out of respect for the families who lost their loves ones on that tragic day,” said Kyle Lyddy, chairman of the commission, which includes four parents of children killed in the attack.
The commission is entering the final phase of recommending either a single or multiple memorials and is considering such proposals as an outdoor park and gardens, and indoor murals and art exhibits, Lyddy said.
