A memorial at a house near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Sandy Hook, Conn. on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 commemorates the lives of the 20 students and six staff members were killed at the school on Dec. 14.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore
NEWTOWN -- There are no anguished cries of children in the controversial 911 telephone recordings of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
But there is the sound of two apparent rifle shots, according to sources who have listened to about nine calls made to Newtown police on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012.
The most disconcerting sound between the school and Newtown police may be the apparent order from headquarters for first responders to "wait" before entering the school, Hearst Connecticut Newspapers has learned.
"Wait until you go into the building," one person says from police headquarters toward the end of the five-minute shooting spree. "I'm not going to send them in yet."
Both sources said it was unclear why the apparent order was given to delay police from going into the school.
A Newtown law enforcement source who was at the scene, however, said the order to wait was directed at ambulance personnel, and that police entered the school as soon as they arrived.
The law enforcement source, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the investigation, said officers in the building told dispatchers they had not yet located the shooter, so sending in medical personnel would have put more lives in danger.
Messages left for Danbury State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III and Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe were not returned. State police spokesman Master Sgt. Donna Tadiello said she couldn't talk about the 911 tapes and was unable to reach either Col. Dan Stebbins or Public Safety CommissionerReuben Bradford Wednesday evening.
"At this point, I'm not able to make a comment," Tadiello said.
The first call came around the time Adam Lanza, 20, shot his way into the school at about 9:45 a.m.
"Somebody's shooting in here ... Sandy Hook School, please!" says one of the first calls to Newtown police headquarters at 3 Main St., located 3.1 miles from the school.
Another early call comes from a woman who says she's in a classroom at the front, left side of the building. In all, the sources said the recordings run about 40 minutes.
The flood of frantic calls from land lines -- cellphones automatically connected with the State Police in Southbury -- apparently deluged the two emergency dispatchers in Newtown. At one point in the recordings, the dispatchers fail to answer a call and the phone rings for 30 seconds or more, the sources recalled.
At another point, Rick Thorne, a school custodian who has declined comment on the shooting but who has been hailed for alerting staff to Lanza's assault-weapon rampage, is disconnected by dispatchers.
"It was weird that they hung up on him," said one source who listened to the recordings. Another source who heard the 911 recordings agreed.
Both sources said they were not sure of the context in which Thorne was disconnected.
"There's a shooting going on," Thorne says during one of the first calls to police. "I keep hearing shooting."
In one of the last calls, Thorne says, "I'm standing in a corner not knowing what to do. I'm a custodian. The shootings happened five minutes ago."
These recordings are among the historic record of the Newtown murders.
Recordings of 911 calls are routinely released after most major criminal incidents, but Sedensky is attempting to keep the recordings private in a case pending before Judge Eliot D. Prescott at state Superior Court in New Britain.
The 911 recordings from Newtown are the kind of information that public records advocates and the media say are crucial in examining the police response to the state's worst mass murder.
The 20 first-graders and six adults in the school were killed by multiple gunshots from Lanza's Bushmaster XM-15 military-style rifle before he shot himself with a 10-mm Glock handgun.
Lanza fired 154 bullets in the school, according to an interim report issued by Sedensky and Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane on March 28.
Last week, families of the slain children and educators reviewed a 40-page summary of the slaughter and were told that Sedensky will release the document to the media Monday.
But recordings of first responders at the scene, who described the carnage in graphic detail, will be kept secret until at least next May as part of a bill that passed on the last day of the legislative session in June.
There are also thousands of pages of investigative details in the possession of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
Prescott, who listened to the 911 recordings on compact disc, is scheduled to rule Monday on Sedensky's appeal of a September decision by the state Freedom of Information Commission, which ordered the release of the recordings.
The recordings remain under seal in the New Britain Superior Court clerk's office, pending a hearing on Monday in Prescott's courtroom, allowing members of the public to comment on the issue of releasing them.
Following the hearing, Prescott is expected to listen to the recordings and rule on the dispute.
SOURCE:newstimes
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