A video widely circulated after the 14 December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 26 victims dead at that school purported to show many contradictions in facts surrounding the Sandy Hook shootings which established that the incident was a staged "hoax." The information presented in that video was a mixture of misinformation, innuendo, and subjective interpretation, such as the following:
-In the immediate aftermath of the terror and tragedy of the Sandy Hook shootings, there was naturally a great deal of confusion among witnesses, police, and the news media about subjects such as the number of shooters involved, the identities of those involved, and the number of guns used. It's hardly surprising or revelatory to note that some witnesses gave contradictory statements, that police initially followed up on the possibility of multiple shooters, or that some news outlets initially reported inaccurate information. All of this is typical in the crush for information from the news media, public, and relatives of victims that follows in the wake of disasters involving large numbers of deaths.
-In their initial sweep of the crime scene, police detained or investigated some people who were soon cleared of any involvement with the shootings: (1)According to the Newtown Bee, a "reliable local law enforcement source" told them that a man with a gun who was spotted in the woods near the school on the day of the incident was an "off-duty tactical squad police officer from another town." (2)Chris Manfredonia, whose 6-year-old daughter attends Sandy Hook, was briefly handcuffed by police after he ran around the school trying to reach his daughter (who had been locked in a room with her teacher). (3)An unidentified man whom some children reported seeing pinned down on the ground in handcuffs outside a nearby firehouse was also briefly detained and then released when police determined he was merely an innocent passerby. (4)Contrary to claims, Christopher Rodia (not to be confused with Chris Manfredonia), whose name can be heard on a recording of a police radio transmission reporting the license plate of a "possible suspect vehicle" parked at Sandy Hook Elementary (because he was being pulled over in a traffic stop elsewhere), was not a suspect in the shootings nor was he the registered owner of the car that accused shooter Adam Lanza drove to the school. The black Honda that police impounded at the scene belonged to a relative of Adam Lanza's and not to Rodia. Chris Rodia himself was not at Sandy Hook Elementary when the shootings took place; he was driving a different vehicle in another town at the time.
The fact that press coverage of these people was soon dropped is not evidence of the news media's compliance in a suppression of information about the involvement of multiple shooters; these persons were all quickly cleared of any wrongdoing and were therefore peripheral to much larger stories about the Sandy Hook tragedy. As Connecticut State Police spokesperson Lt. Paul Vance stated, “Were there other people detained? The answer is yes. In the height of battle, until you’ve determined who, what, when, where and why of everyone in existence ... that’s not unusual."
The seeming contradiction over how Adam Lanza could have used a Bushmaster version AR-15 rifle in the shootings when that same weapon was supposedly found locked in the trunk of his car afterwards was cleared up a few days later. The weapon found in the trunk of Lanza's car was a shotgun, not an AR-15: (1)Adam Lanza brought three weapons inside Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14 and left a fourth in his car, police said. Those weapons were a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and two handguns — a Glock 10 mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm. In the car he left a shotgun ... (2)The primary weapon used in the attack was a "Bushmaster AR-15 assault-type weapon," said Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance.
Connecticut state police issued an update on 23 January 2013 confirming that information: (1)State police seized four guns when they responded to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December, according to state police. (2)Police [said they had[ provided details in [previous] news conferences but wanted to eliminate any confusion or misinformation. (3)Police said they found a Bushmaster .223 caliber model XM15-E2S rifle with high capacity 30 round clips, a Glock 10-mm handgun and a Sig-Sauer P226 9mm handgun inside the school. (4)Police identified Adam Lanza as the gunman who shot and killed 20 first graders and six staff members. (5)Police also searched Lanza’s car, which was in parking lot, and found an Izhmash Canta-12 12-gauge shotgun.
The medical examiner was therefore correct, not mistaken, when he stated that the rifle was the primary weapon used in the shootings.
(A video clip of an early NBC news report from 15 December 2012 which misstated the types of weapons Adam Lanza had with him on the day of the shootings was circulated, a month after the fact, as "proof" that Lanza did not use an AR-15 rifle in the shootings. As noted above, this clip was one of many examples of errors in reporting which occurred in the crush to put out information in the immediate aftermath of the shootings and was soon corrected.)
-The video questions whether "frantic kids [wouldn't] be a difficult target to hit" and suggests that a "20 year old autistic psyco [sic] with no gun history" would be unlikely to hit so many targets 3 to 11 times each. Such a statement is mind-bogglingly inane: Adam Lanza was not picking off comprehending adults who had free range of action to escape his onslaught; he was using a semi-automatic rifle to shoot at terrified schoolchildren who were trapped in small, enclosed spaces and had little or no understanding of what was taking place.
-The answer to the question arising from the initial misidentification of Adam Lanza as his brother Ryan, about how Adam Lanza "could possibly have Ryan's valid ID if he has not seen him in years?" is a simple one, provided by Ryan Lanza himself: "Ryan told police that his brother ... might have had his ID even though they had not seen each other in two years." Ryan had last seen his brother in 2010, and many forms of ID are valid for two years or more. (And nothing says the ID in Adam Lanza's possession had to be "valid": even expired ID found on a person is generally assumed to belong to that person until proved otherwise, unless the ID is immediately ruled out due to an obvious mismatch with the characteristics of a photograph or physical description.)
-One of several erroneous pieces of information promulgated in early reporting on the Sandy Hook tragedy was the claim that Adam Lanza's mother Nancy was a kindergarten teacher at that school. By the following day, most major news outlets were correctly reporting that Nancy Lanza did not have any connection to Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Sarah (Sally) Cox, the Sandy Hook school nurse whom USA Today mistakenly reported as saying that Nancy Lanza was a "very caring, experienced kindergarten teacher" is in fact a real person who gave numerous interviews about what she experienced during the shootings. A search run on the Connecticut state eLicensing web site using her given name of Sarah Cox (rather than "Sally Cox," as shown in the video) confirms that she is indeed a registered nurse in the state of Connecticut.
-Out of all the interviews and public statements made by parents, relatives, friends, and classmates of Sandy Hook victims, the video plucks two brief snippets of Robbie Parker (father of slain 6-year-old Emilie Parker) and Lynn McDonnell (mother of slain 7-year-old Grace McDonnell) smiling and laughing in conjunction with television appearances in which they spoke about their children, offering this as evidence that a hoax is being perpetrated by people who are merely pretending to be grieving parents. But parents who have lost children don't all walk around afterwards utterly glum and disconsolate, never allowing themselves to exhibit any emotion other than sadness. Either of them might have been laughing and smiling during or immediately prior to talking about their children for any number of reasons: because they were reacting to something funny, because they were expressing nervous anxiety about facing a national television audience, or because they were recalling fond memories of their deceased children.
(Snopes)
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