Sandy Hook Survivor’s Parents Seek Permission To Sue Connecticut For Newtown Shooting

Two weeks after 27 people were murdered in a hail of bullets at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, one six-year-old survivor’s family is seeking to sue the state for damage the child sustained in witnessing the incomprehensible horror earlier this month.

The surviving child, who has not been identified publicly, was in attendance at Sandy Hook Elementary the day Adam Lanza stormed into the building and murdered 20 first-graders and six staff members before taking his own life.

Many children were spared due to the heroic acts of teachers at the school, but the claim alleges that the state failed to adequately protect the young child represented by New Haven-based attorney Irv Pinsky.

Pinsky says that unmeasurable damage resulted from the shooter’s actions, and that the child, identified in the Sandy Hook shooting claim as Jill Doe, was potentially irrevocably harmed:

“As a consequence, the … child has sustained emotional and psychological trauma and injury, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined.”

The Hartford Courant reports that Pinsky explains some of the trauma resulting from the use of the school’s intercom during the massacre, subjecting every person within the building to the horrific sounds of the ongoing killings before they stopped:

“She was in her classroom, and over the loudspeaker came the horrific confrontation between the fellow who shot everybody and other people … Her friends were killed. That’s pretty traumatic.”

The Courant reports that Pinsky says the claim was filed against the state — which normally is shielded from such suits due to immunity — so the information can be received intact before it can be “shaped” by insurance companies:

“This way the state of Connecticut will get the notice and they will have the attorney general’s office and their investigators see what happened and why the school was not protected.”

If given permission to proceed, the Sandy Hook shooting lawsuit will be filed seeking $100 million in damages.