ABSTRACT
On December 14, 2012, a tall, thin man barely out of his teens, wearing combat gear and armed with a small arsenal of assault weapons, walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School near Newtown, Connecticut and, one after the other, entered two classrooms and began firing at children and adults alike. After he stopped, he shot himself in the head. He killed everyone he hit except one and left behind twenty dead children and six adults. The authorities identified the shooter as Adam Lanza of Newtown. Later, the police searched his home and found his mother’s body; she had also been shot to death. His former classmates described Lanza as “intelligent and shy.” No immediate motive seemed apparent for the attack (Barron, 2012). Coincidentally, that same morning, in a small village in China, a man with a knife attacked twenty-two children and one adult in an elementary school; nine victims were admitted to a nearby hospital, and not one was killed.
