This 6-Year-Old Survivor's Story May Be the Most Intense from Newtown Yet

Reuters
Alexander Abad-Santos 18,840 Views Dec 17, 2012

In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. The name of the girl is not being revealed — we may have seen and heard too much from these poor kids on TV already — but ABC News's Lara Spencer reports the pastor's recounting: "Mom, I'm okay but all my friends are dead," she said. Here's the ABC report:

The girl's story is at once as sad and uplifting as any to come out of Newtown. But we can't imagine the kind of lingering effects the event will have on her — 15.4 percent of Virginia Tech students exhibited signs of PTSD three to four months after the incident there, and they weren't six. 

Sandy Hook's little Jane Doe wasn't the only survivor in one of the two classrooms attacked on Friday. State police officers confirmed at a news conference Monday morning that two unnamed adults who had gunshot wounds are now recovering in the hospital.

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