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The Sandy Hook School Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information
Inconsistencies
and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the
Newtown school massacre.
“[My
staff] and I hope the people of Newtown don’t have it crash on
their head later.”
–Connecticut Medical Examiner D. Wayne Carver II, MD, December 15,
2012
25
December, 2012
Inconsistencies
and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the
Newtown school massacre. The public’s general acceptance of the
event’s validity and faith in its resolution suggests a deepened
credulousness borne from a world where almost all news and
information is electronically mediated and controlled. The condition
is reinforced through the corporate media’s unwillingness to push
hard questions vis-à-vis Connecticut and federal authorities who
together bottlenecked information while invoking prior restraint
through threats of prosecutorial action against journalists and the
broader citizenry seeking to interpret the event on social media.
Along
these lines on December 19 the Connecticut State Police assigned
individual personnel to each of the 26 families who lost a loved one
at Sandy Hook Elementary. “The families have requested no press
interviews,” State Police assert on their behalf, “and we are
asking that this request be honored.[1] The de facto gag order will
be in effect until the investigation concludes—now forecast to be
“several months away” even though lone gunman Adam Lanza has been
confirmed as the sole culprit.[2]
With
the exception of an unusual and apparently contrived appearance by
Emilie Parker’s alleged father, victims’ family members have been
almost wholly absent from public scrutiny.[3] What can be gleaned
from this and similar coverage raises many more questions and glaring
inconsistencies than answers. While it sounds like an outrageous
claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever
took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the
nation’s news media have described.
The
Accidental Medical Examiner
An
especially important yet greatly underreported feature of the Sandy
Hook affair is the wholly bizarre performance of Connecticut’s top
medical examiner H. Wayne Carver II at a December 15 press
conference. Carver’s unusual remarks and behavior warrant close
consideration because in light of his professional notoriety they
appear remarkably amateurish and out of character.
H.
Wayne Carver II has an extremely self-assured, almost swaggering
presence in Connecticut state administration. In early 2012 Carver
threatened to vacate his position because of state budget cuts and
streamlining measures that threatened his professional autonomy over
the projects and personnel he oversaw.
Along
these lines the pathologist has gone to excessive lengths to
demonstrate his findings and expert opinion in court proceedings. For
example, in a famous criminal case Carver “put a euthanized pig
through a wood chipper so jurors could match striations on the bone
fragments with the few ounces of evidence that prosecutors said were
on the remains of the victim.”[4] One would therefore expect Carver
to be in his element while identifying and verifying the exact ways
in which Sandy Hook’s children and teachers met their violent
demise.
Yet
the H. Wayne Carver who showed up to the December 15 press conference
is an almost entirely different man, appearing apprehensive and
uncertain, as if he is at a significant remove from the postmortem
operation he had overseen. The multiple gaffes, discrepancies, and
hedges in response to reporters’ astute questions suggest that he
is either under coercion or an imposter. While the latter sounds
untenable it would go a long way in explaining his sub-pedestrian
grasp of medical procedures and terminology.
With
this in mind extended excerpts from this exchange are worthy of
recounting here in print. Carver is accompanied by Connecticut State
Police Lieutenant H. Paul Vance and additional Connecticut State
Police personnel. The reporters are off-screen and thus unidentified
so I have assigned them simple numerical identification based on what
can be discerned of their voices.
Reporter
#1: So the rifle was the primary weapon?
H.
Wayne Carver: Yes.
Reporter
#1: [Inaudible]
Carver:
Uh (pause). Question was what caliber were these bullets. And I
know—I probably know more about firearms than most pathologists but
if I say it in court they yell at me and don’t make me answer
[sic]—so [nervous laughter]. I’ll let the police do that for you.
Reporter
#2: Doctor can you tell us about the nature of the wounds. Were they
at very close range? Were the children shot at from across the room?
Carver:
Uhm, I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from
three to eleven wounds apiece and I only saw two of them with close
range shooting. Uh, but that’s, uh y’know, a sample. Uh, I really
don’t have detailed information on the rest of the injuries.
[Given
that Carver is Connecticut’s top coroner and in charge of the
entire postmortem this is a startling admission.-JT]
Reporter
#3: But you said that the long rifle was used?
Carver:
Yes.
Reporter
#3: But the long rifle was discovered in the car.
State
Police Lieutenant Vance: That’s not correct, sir.
Unidentified
reporter #4: How many bullets or bullet fragments did you find in the
autopsy. Can you tell us that?
Carver:
Oh. I’m lucky I can tell you how many I found. I don’t know.
There were lots of them, OK? This type of weapon is not, uh ... the
bullets are designed in such a fashion that the energy—this is very
clinical. I shouldn’t be saying this. But the energy is deposited
in the tissue so the bullet stays in [the tissue].
[In
fact, the Bushmaster .223 Connecticut police finally claimed was used
in the shooting is designed for long range field use and utilizes
high velocity bullets averaging 3,000 feet-per-second, the energy of
which even at considerable distance would penetrate several bodies
before finally coming to rest in tissue.]
Reporter
#5: How close were the injuries?
Carver:
Uh, all the ones (pause). I believe say, yes [sic].
Reporter
#6: In what shape were the bodies when the families were brought to
check [inaudible].
Carver:
Uh, we did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. We
took pictures of them, uhm, of their facial features. We have, uh,
uh—it’s easier on the families when you do that. Un, there is,
uh, a time and place for the up close and personal in the grieving
process, but to accomplish this we thought it would be best to do it
this way and, uh, you can sort of, uh ... You can control a situation
depending on the photographer, and I have very good photographers.
Uh, but uh—
Reporter
#7: Do you know the difference of the time of death between the
mother in the house and the bodies recovered [in the school].
Carver:
Uh, no, I don’t. Sorry [shakes head excitedly] I don’t!
[embarrassed laugh]
Reporter
#8: Did the gunman kill himself with the rifle?
Carver:
No. I—I don’t know yet. I’ll-I’ll examine him tomorrow
morning. But, but I don’t think so.
[Why
has Carver left arguably the most important specimen for last? And
why doesn't he think Lanza didn't commit suicide with the rifle?]
Reporter
#9: In terms of the children, were they all found in one classroom
or—
Carver:
Uhm ... [inaudible] [Turns to Lieutenant Vance] Paul and company will
deal with that.
Reporter
#9: What?
Carver:
Paul and company will deal with that. Lieutenant Vance is going to
handle that one.
Reporter
#10: Was there any evidence of a struggle? Any bruises?
Carver:
No.
Reporter
#11: The nature of the shooting; is there any sense that there was a
lot of care taken with precision [inaudible] or randomly?
Carver:
[Exhales while glancing upward, as if frustrated] Both. It’s a very
difficult question to answer ... You’d think after thousands of
people I’ve seen shot but I … It’s ... If I attempted to answer
it in court there’d be an objection and then they’d win—[nervous
laughter].
[Who
would win? Why does an expert whose routine job as a public employee
is to provide impartial medical opinion concerned with winning and
losing in court? Further, Carver is not in court but rather at a
press conference.]
Reporter
#12: Doctor, can you discuss the fatal injuries to the adults?
Carver:
Ah, they were similar to those of the children.
Reporter
#13: Doctor, the children you had autopsied, where in the bodies were
they hit?
Carver:
Uhm [pause]. All over. All over.
Reporter
#14: Were [the students] sitting at their desks or were they running
away when this happened?
Carver:
I’ll let the guys who—the scene guys talk—address that issue.
I, uh, obviously I was at the scene. Obviously I’m very experienced
in that. But there are people who are, uh, the number one
professionals in that. I’ll let them—let that [voice trails off].
Reporter
[#15]: How many boys and how many girls [were killed]?
Carver:
[Slowly shaking his head] I don’t know.
More
Unanswered Questions and Inconsistencies
In
addition to Carver’s remarks several additional chronological and
evidentiary contradictions in the official version of the Sandy Hook
shooting are cause for serious consideration and leave doubt in terms
of how the event transpired vis-à-vis the way authorities and major
media outlets have presented it. It is now well known that early on
journalists reported that Adam Lanza’s brother Ryan Lanza was
reported to be the gunman, and that pistols were used in the shooting
rather than a rifle. Yet these are merely the tip of the iceberg.
When
Did the Gunman Arrive?
After
Adam Lanza fatally shot and killed his mother at his residence, he
drove himself to the elementary school campus, arriving one half hour
after classes had commenced. Dressed in black, Lanza proceeds
completely unnoticed through an oddly vacant parking lot with a
military style rifle and shoots his way through double glass doors
and a brand new yet apparently poorly engineered security system.
Further,
initial press accounts suggest how no school personnel or students
heard gunshots and no 911 calls are made until after Lanza begins
firing inside the facility. “It was a lovely day,” Sandy Hook
fourth grade teacher Theodore Varga said. And then, suddenly and
unfathomably, gunshots rang out. “I can’t even remember how
many,” Varga said.[5]
The
recollection contrasts sharply with an updated version of Lanza’s
arrival where at 9:30AM he walked
up to the front entrance and fired at least a half dozen rounds into
the glass doors. The thunderous sound of Lanza blowing an opening big
enough to walk through the locked school door caused Principal Dawn
Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Scherlach to bolt from a
nearby meeting room to investigate. He shot and killed them both as
they ran toward him.
Breaching
the school’s security system in such a way would have likely
triggered some automatic alert of school personnel. Further, why
would the school’s administrators run toward an armed man who has
just noisily blasted his way into the building?
Two
other staff members attending the meeting with Hocksprung and
Scherlach sustained injuries “in the hail of bullets” but
returned to the aforementioned meeting room and managed a call to
911.[6] This contrasted with earlier reports where the first 911 call
claimed students “were trapped in a classroom with the adult
shooter who had two guns.”[7] Recordings of the first police
dispatch following the 911 call at 9:35:50 indicate that someone
“thinks there’s someone shooting in the building.”[8] There is
a clear distinction between potentially hearing shots somewhere in
the building and being almost mortally caught in a “hail of
bullets.”
How
did the gunman fire so many shots in such little time?
According
to Dr. Carver and State Police, Lanza shot each victim between 3 and
11 times during a 5 to 7 minute span. If one is to average this out
to 7 bullets per individual—excluding misses—Lanza shot 182
times, or once every two seconds. Yet according to the official story
Lanza was the sole assassin and armed with only one weapon. Thus if
misses and changing the gun’s 30-shot magazine at least 6 times are
added to the equation Lanza must have been averaging about one shot
per second—extremely skilled use of a single firearm for a young
man with absolutely no military training and who was on the verge of
being institutionalized. Still, an accurate rendering of the event is
even more difficult to arrive at because the chief medical examiner
admittedly has no idea exactly how the children were shot or whether
a struggle ensued.
Where
is the Photo and Video Evidence?
Photographic
and video evidence is at once profuse yet lacking in terms of its
capacity to demonstrate that a mass shooting took place on the scale
described by authorities. For example, in an era of ubiquitous video
surveillance of public buildings especially no visual evidence of
Lanza’s violent entry has emerged. And while studio snapshots of
the Sandy Hook victims abound there is little if any eyewitness
testimony of anyone who’s observed the corpses except for Carver
and his staff, and they appear almost as confused about the
conditions of the deceased as any layperson watching televised
coverage of the event. Nor are there any routine eyewitness, photo or
video evidence of the crime scene’s aftermath—broken glass,
blasted security locks and doors, bullet casings and holes, bloodied
walls and floors—all of which are common in such investigations and
reportage.
Why
Were Medical Personnel Turned Away From the Crime Scene?
Oddly
enough medical personnel are forced to set up their operation not at
the school where the dead and injured lay, but rather at the fire
station several hundred feet away. This flies in the face of standard
medical operating procedure where personnel are situated as close to
the scene as possible. There is no doubt that the school had ample
room to accommodate such personnel. Yet medical responders who rushed
to Sandy Hill Elementary upon receiving word of the tragedy were
denied entry to the school and forced to set up primary and secondary
triages off school grounds and wait for the injured to be brought to
them.
Shortly
after the shooting “as other ambulances from neighboring
communities rolled up, sirens blaring, the first responders slowly
realized that their training would be tragically underutilized on
this horrible day. ‘You may not be able to save everybody, but you
damn well try,’” 44 year old emergency medical technician James
Wolff told NBC News. “’And when (we) didn’t have the
opportunity to put our skills into action, it’s difficult.’”[9]
In
light of this, who were the qualified medical practitioners
pronounced the 20 children and 7 adults dead? Who decided that none
could be revived? Carver and his staff are apparently the only
medical personnel to have attended to the victims—yet this was in
the postmortem conducted several hours later. Such slipshod handling
of the crime scene leaves the State of Connecticut open to a
potential array of hefty civil claims by families of the slain.
Did
a mass evacuation of the school take place?
Sandy
Hook Elementary is attended by 600 students. Yet there is no
photographic or video evidence of an evacuation on this scale.
Instead, limited video and photographic imagery suggest that a
limited evacuation of perhaps at most several dozen students
occurred.
A
highly circulated photo depicts students walking in a single file
formation with their hands on each others’ shoulders and eyes shut.
Yet this was the image of a drill that took place prior to the event
itself.[10] Most other photos are portraits of individual children.
Despite aerial video footage of the event documenting law enforcement
scouring the scene and apprehending one or more suspects in the
wooded area nearby the school,[11] there is no such evidence that a
mass exodus of children from the school transpired once law
enforcement pronounced Sandy Hook secure. Nor are there videos or
photos of several hundred students and their parents at the
oft-referenced fire station nearby where students were routed for
parent pick up.
Sound
Bite Prism and the Will to Believe
Outside
of a handful of citizen journalists and alternative media
commentators Sandy Hill’s dramatically shifting factual and
circumstantial terrain has escaped serious critique because it is
presented through major media’s carefully constructed prism of
select sound bites alongside a widespread and longstanding cultural
impulse to accept the pronouncements of experts, be they bemused
physicians, high ranking law enforcement officers, or political
leaders demonstrating emotionally-grounded concern.
Political
scientist W. Lance Bennett calls this the news media’s
“authority-disorder bias.” “Whether the world is returned to a
safe, normal place,” Bennett writes, “or whether the very idea of
a normal world is called into question, the news is preoccupied with
order, along with related questions of whether authorities are
capable of establishing or restoring it.”[12]
Despite
Carver’s bizarre performance and law enforcement authorities’
inability to settle on and relay simple facts, media management’s
impulse to assure audiences and readerships of the Newtown
community’s inevitable adjustment to its trauma and loss with the
aid of the government’s protective oversight—however incompetent
that may be—far surpasses a willingness to undermine this now
almost universal news media narrative with messy questions and
suggestions of intrigue. This well-worn script is one the public has
been conditioned to accept. If few people relied on such media to
develop their world view this would hardly be a concern. Yet this is
regrettably not the case.
The
Sandy Hook tragedy was on a far larger scale than the past year’s
numerous slaughters, including the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and
the Batman theater shooting in Colorado. It also included glaringly
illogical exercises and pronouncements by authorities alongside
remarkably unusual evidentiary fissures indistinguishable by an
American political imagination cultivated to believe that the
corporate, government and military’s sophisticated system of
organized crime is largely confined to Hollywood-style storylines
while really existing malfeasance and crises are without exception
returned to normalcy.
If
recent history is a prelude the likelihood of citizens collectively
assessing and questioning Sandy Hook is limited even given the
event’s overtly superficial trappings. While the incident is
ostensibly being handled by Connecticut law enforcement, early
reports indicate how federal authorities were on the scene as the 911
call was received. Regardless of where one stands on the Second
Amendment and gun control, it is not unreasonable to suggest the
Obama administration complicity or direct oversight of an incident
that has in very short order sparked a national debate on the very
topic—and not coincidentally remains a key piece of Obama’s
political platform.
The
move to railroad this program through with the aid of major media and
an irrefutable barrage of children’s portraits, “heartfelt”
platitudes and ostensible tears neutralizes a quest for genuine
evidence, reasoned observation and in the case of Newtown honest and
responsible law enforcement. Moreover, to suggest that Obama is not
capable of deploying such techniques to achieve political ends is to
similarly place ones faith in image and interpretation above
substance and established fact, the exact inclination that in sum has
brought America to such an impasse.
Notes
[1]
State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public
Protection, ”State
Police Investigate Newtown School Shooting”
[Press Release] December 15, 2012.
[2]
State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public
Protection, “Update:
Newtown School Shooting”
[Press Release], December 19, 2012.
[3]
CNN, “Family of 6 Year Old Victim,” December 14, 2012, “Sandy
Hook School Shooting Hoax Fraud,”
Youtube, December 17, 2012.
[5]
John Christofferson and Jocelyn Noveck, “Sandy
Hook School Shooting: Adam Lanza Kills 26 and Himself at Connecticut
School,”
Huffington
Post,
December 15, 2012.
[6]
Edmund H. Mahoney, Dave Altmari, and Jon Lender, “Sandy
Hook Shooter’s Pause May Have Aided Escape,”
Hartford
Courant,
December 23, 2012.
[7]
Jaweed Kaleem, “Sandy
Hook Elementary School Shooting: Newtown Connecticut Students,
Administrators Among Victims, Reports Say,”
Huffington
Post,
December 14, 2012.
[8]
RadioMan911TV, “Sandy
Hook Elementary School Shooting Newtown Police / Fire and CT State
Police,”
Youtube, December 14, 2012. At several points in this recording audio
is scrambled, particularly following apprehension of a second
shooting suspect outside the school, suggesting a purposeful attempt
to withhold vital information.
[9]
Miranda Leitsinger, “You
Feel Helpless: First Responders Rushed to School After Shooting, Only
to Wait,”
US
News on NBC,
December 20.
[11]
Rob Dew, “Evidence of 2nd
and 3rd
Shooter at Sandy Hook,” Infowars
Nightly News,
December 18, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCFHImNeRw.
A more detailed yet less polished analysis was developed by citizen
journalist Idahopicker, “Sandy
Hook Elem: 3 Shooters,”
December 16, 2012. See also James F. Tracy, “Analyzing
the Newtown Narrative: Sandy Hook’s Disappearing Shooter Suspects,”
Memoryholeblog.com,
December 20, 2012.
[12]
W. Lance Bennett, News:
The Politics of Illusion
9th
Edition, Boston: Longman, 2012, 47.
Andrew
Whooley provided suggestions and research for this article.
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