Survivor Says Principal, Others Saved Her in U.S. School Rampage.

[elleng]

Source: nyt/reuters

A survivor of the elementary school massacre in Connecticut that killed 26 people said on Sunday the principal and two staff members had saved her and others' lives by warning that a gunman was in the building.

Becky Virgalla, a reading consultant at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, said she was in a meeting with Principal Dawn Hochsprung, school psychologist Mary Sherlach and other colleagues when the shooter broke into the building on December 14.

Hochsprung, Sherlach and lead teacher Natalie Hammond "went out in the hall to check out the noise that we didn't know that was gunshots at first," Virgalla told Reuters Television at a memorial where the names of the victims were written on wooden angels.

"The three of them were shot and they yelled back 'shooter, stay put.' And they saved my life and the life of four others who were at that meeting," she said.

Virgalla had some advice for parents and teachers: make sure your doors lock from the inside.

"Ours did not and teachers had to go out. You can't be out in a hall when a shooter is present in your school. Just that simple thing could make a difference in time and safety of the children," she said.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/23/arts/23reuters-usa-shooting-connecticut.html?hp

[xtraxritical]

1. Why were there no locks on the classroom doors? Gosh...

[marybourg]

3. Because children can lock themselves inside in any number

of situations, creating danger to themselves and others. And -- until the recent manic proliferation of assault weapons, classrooms were very safe places.

[elleng]

5. Thanks. Makes sense.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. I believe Florida public schools have locks in the inside of the classroom.

Hence the statement you hear on t.v. often: the school is in lockdown.

[1monster]

10. No. The doors lock on the outside, not on the inside. The door handles are made so that

even when the doors are locked, they can be opened from the inside. In order to lock the doors, the teacher has to step outside of the classroom, and lock it from the outside.

This is true of closet doors and office doors in schools in Florida (and probably every other state too).

It is to prevent a student being inadvertantly locked inside a classroom.

[Baitball Blogger]

13. Interesting. So how does she run back into the classroom for safety?

[1monster]

14. Hold the door open while locking it and then slip back into the

classroomm, closing the door after entering.

[emmadoggy]

4. In the school where I work,

in order to lock the door, you must have your key, go to the outside door knob, turn the lock and then pull the door shut.

Not exactly quick and easy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Same here

It's a hassle.

[tblue]

6. Mine doesn't lock from inside.

Oy. I am so angry that we even have to think about this. But okay. Thanks.

[PSPS]

7. Yes, we must change this lest we offend the gun fetishists and their "half of an amendment."

[obama2terms]

9. How do the doors not lock? I hope they rethink that when the kids go back to school

[MichiganVote]

11. Money. It takes money to have or re position locks. Besides, most classroom doors

also have a glass inset or a glass window. Not to mention that the majority of doors are hollow wooded things that couldn't stop a fly.

[1monster]

12. The doors do lock, but only from the outside. It is a safety measure.

It would be nice if we could have an emergency lock that works from the inside, but in the past, it was not something anybody ever needed to think of.