NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) - Town officials in Connecticut say the principal who died in the rampage at an elementary school was killed while lunging at the gunman as she tried to overtake him.
Dawn Hochsprung was gunned down in Friday's massacre in Newtown, killing 26 people including 20 children and then himself. Board of Education chairwoman Debbie Liedlien says administrators were coming out of a meeting when the gunman forced his way into the school and ran toward him.
Jeff Capeci is chairman of the town's Legislative Council. Asked whether Hochsprung is a hero, he says, "From what we know, it's hard to classify her as anything else."
A well-liked and experienced administrator, Dawn Hochsprung had been principal
since 2010, said Gerald Stomski, the first selectman of nearby
Woodbury. He said police told him of her death.
Both Liedlien and Capeci say she immediately became a beloved figure.
Liedlien says "it's so sad to lose somebody like her" and that residents
are feeling "a deep sense of loss" over her death.
Hochsprung was a principal in Woodbury schools
before taking the job in Newtown, Stomski said. He said people
throughout town were mourning her death.
"She had an extremely likable style about her," Stomski said. "She was an extremely charismatic principal while she was here."
She frequently tweeted photos from her job and
wrote upbeat tweets about what was going on at the school. Four days
before she died, she posted a photo of two kindergarten girls paying for
groceries over a toy cash register in a classroom. She called them
"kinders" and saw them as "74 new opportunities to inspire lifelong
learning!"
More hauntingly, she wrote a letter before the
school year outlining new safety measures including locked doors during
school hours, several publications reported, and tweeted a photo of
students who'd been evacuated from the building during a safety drill
earlier in the school year.
"I don't think you could find a more positive place
to bring students to every day," she told The Newtown Bee newspaper in
2010 in a story about the hiring of new administrators in the district.
She had worked for 12 years as an administrator before coming to Sandy
Hook, including six years in nearby Danbury, the newspaper reported.
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