Sandy Hook Victims

Case background and investigation

On the morning of December 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 first-grade students and six adult members of staff. Two other adults were wounded. According to the report of the State's Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury, the shooter was Adam Lanza, 20, who had shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their Newtown home before driving to the school.

The Connecticut Mirror, summarizing the report, said the first 911 call was received at 9:35:39 a.m. and that Lanza shot himself at 9:40:03 a.m., less than five minutes later. Inside the school he fired 154 rounds from a Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle. He was also carrying two handguns. His mother had been shot with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle.

State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III released his report on November 25, 2013. It concluded that Lanza acted alone and that there would be no arrests or prosecutions, and the investigation was closed. The report found that the attack had been planned but said the evidence gave no clear indication of why he carried it out or why he chose the school. It described him as increasingly isolated in the period before the shooting and noted that he had been diagnosed with Asperger's disorder in 2005.

The killings led to years of litigation. According to Wikipedia's account, families of nine victims reached a $73 million settlement with the rifle's manufacturer, Remington, in February 2022.

Relatives of the victims also sued Infowars host Alex Jones, who had repeatedly and falsely said the shooting was staged. CBS News reported that a Connecticut jury awarded $965 million in 2022 for defamation and emotional distress and that a judge later added $474 million in punitive damages. In a separate Texas case, the parents of one child were awarded about $50 million. PBS NewsHour reported that Jones acknowledged at trial that the shooting was real.

Jones and his company filed for bankruptcy. The US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of the Connecticut judgment on October 14, 2025, CBS News reported. In August 2026, a Texas appeals court upheld $4.1 million in compensatory damages in the Texas case but cut the punitive award from about $45 million to $1.5 million, citing a state cap, according to PBS NewsHour. That ruling did not affect the Connecticut judgment, which PBS put at $1.25 billion, and Jones said he would continue to appeal.