Child as Activist

If you watched John Oliver on Sunday October 16th his main story was about Transgendered Children and their rights which are increasingly being removed and even the very word or subject is being banned in many schools across the country as this issue has become the new social media ## of late in the endless sparring between the right and left. It is of course nuts as social media is a cesspool of misinformation and histrionics that are fueled by the culture wars as established by the two political parties serving in Congress. The New York Times did an excellent breakdown of how they use social media to encourage and enrage their followers to incite discord and as we know now, violence. Words apparently can lead to hurt.

I found this article in the Washington Post and with that I am sorry that this little girl is involved at all. She is a survivor and will go through immense struggles coping with this and in turn adding pressure to somehow be the spokesperson to bring change does little to help her process and try to live her life as a CHILD should in the best of circumstances and these certainly are not the best in any stretch of the imagination.

Uvalde was a failure by the Adults not in the room. The Adults in the room died trying to save lives, only one survived and he will have many years of rehab from the injuries both physical and mental as he works toward recovery. Children have no need to be involved but they are now largely thanks to David Hogg who along with other Survivors of Parkland decided to take on the role of Activists and push forward with Gun Safety and Legislation to regulate guns. They are still pushing forward but now many have taken a back seat. David still is on social media but I can see cracks in the rage and anger and with that he is at Harvard and should be focused on the now and the end game and at that point move into a larger role, but to spend his entire College Years on this issue is to me a point that has been made.

The Court Case in Florida is over and the Parents are still processing their grief and anger and as we also know as more and more shootings have occurred in schools, at parks, at grocery stores, at parades and in homes little has changed with regards to Gun regulations and safety, in fact gun restrictions have loosened. And we are now putting all of this on children. I watched the families in the Court over Alex Jones and his bullshit regarding Sandy Hook, a shooting that was well over a decade ago. I watched the families during the Florida trial and now we have another coming in Michigan and more to follow. This will never end well. Yes the shooter will be found guilty and regardless of the penalty it doesn’t change a thing; Children and adults died by a GUN, held by a hand who managed to have legal access to one. That is the real problem and the only solution, getting guns off our streets. Start by not playing with them as children. That might help. Stop filming movies and video games that don’t actually depict the real violence found at the end of a bullet and start showing the actual crime scene photos. Some of the children were so badly mangled their parents were sent DNA kits in which to assist in identifying remains and now Texas wants that for all children in all schools in the State. The message there? You decide.

And with that I close with a Biblical verse, yes irony but that is the point that many of these shootings happen in quote/unquote Bible belt, Free Rights and Love God and Guns country. So they should be more than familiar with this citation:

Matthew 18:2-6

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.

3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Memorial Day

The irony that tomorrow is Memorial Day where we are to honor those who served and gave up their lives in defense of their country is not lost. The last funeral for the Tops Grocery shooting was held yesterday. The ones from Uvalde have yet to begin and with that we have a long week ahead in which to do what we do best, absolutely fucking nothing.

This weekend I actually had an encounter when I mentioned the shooting, they said, “I heard about that.” With that I wanted to begin screaming and rolling on the floor as if I was having a seizure. I did not but I wanted to. I just said, “Yes another mass shooting and its just TERRIBLE and so what are your plans for the weekend?” Seriously I could not believe the bullshit coming out of my mouth and then I went on with my day and stopped and bought a bottle of Bourbon and one of white Wine as frankly I could not decide which would go down better. Then I turned on two of George Carlin comedy specials, We are all diseased, filmed at the Beacon Theater in New York in 1999. Then I watched what was his last, It’s Bad for ya, filmed in 2008, just four months prior to his fatal heart attack. His voice and his strong opinions have shaped both the right and the left in determining what is considered an argument for or against the positions of either. The right has used him to frame their small government, anti vaxx policies and We are all diseased seems to play into that belief when you take some of his comments out of context. The left have used him to remind those that Police brutality is not new and one that has been a problem for decades. See how each can cherry pick the version they like best, like Mom did right? I did think diseased was highly prescient in much of what comes to fruition in today’s America. Little did he know that in a few years Terrorists would take planes down with nothing more than box cutters, and that a plague would descend on America and with that the idea of vaccines and health and paranoia would all coalesce into a nightmare which oddly Police Brutality and Violence would enable us to come together for a minute. And yes he even discusses school shootings with what? An AK 47. Funny, not funny? But again I would not have the audacity to presume what Mr. Carlin would say today as he would be 85 and maybe a dedicated Fox News watcher. If that is what happens when you hit your dotage I am going to get moving and doing so I can end it all before then.

And today is Sunday, a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and it brings me to another iconic figure, Mr. Robinson, and I wonder how he would process this rising tide of violence in our streets and in our schools and at our places of worship, businesses, or in our homes. Does that make you wonder what kind of neighborhood you live in?

I am beyond angry today and still will continue my quest on my own as I have no idea what or where to go to find the kind of support I need to move through this. We are at the day four where we all move on and away and yet for those who have been directly touched by this they never do. So for them where they go is apparently into despair for life as here we are 10 years after Sandy Hook and I cannot name one meaningful measure or law directly aimed at reducing this kind of violence. So I share with you the below article that confirms this that we are at the moving on space and time allowed to grieve, be angry and that is until the next or until it happens to you.

How long are Americans sad and angry about mass shootings? Four days.

To harness emotions into action like gun legislation, we have to act fast

Perspective by Patrick SharkeyPatrick Sharkey is the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of “Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.”

May 26, 2022 THE WASHINGTON POST

Americans woke up on Wednesday morning feeling some combination of deep sadness and intense anger. The feeling was shared throughout the country. Americans are grieving. This is not a hunch from watching the interviews in Uvalde, Tex., or talking with friends, family and colleagues about the horror of an 18-year-old’s bursting into an elementary school there and killing 19 children and two teachers. I have seen it in the data.

As overwhelming as the feeling is now, the available evidence suggests that it will fade into the background within about four days. This means we have four days in which to act on it. Four days to take steps that might help prevent the next Uvalde or Sandy Hook or Parkland or Columbine massacre before we move on, before we return to the immediate concerns of our own lives — and before the urge to take on an intractable problem loses the emotion that can fuel momentum.

I came to this conclusion after working with a unique daily survey conducted by Gallup. Nearly every single day from 2008 through 2017, Gallup interviewed a national sample of Americans, asking them their opinions and perceptions about a variety of issues. Gallup also asked about their emotions on a given day: Had they felt happy or sad the day before? Were they angry or smiling? Trends in the data show a remarkably consistent pattern. Almost every day, between 10 percent and 25 percent of Americans reported feeling sadness the previous day. What immediately stands out when these feelings are plotted onto a graph is the tall, anomalous spike in the middle — on Dec. 15, 2012, to be precise. That day, nearly 40 percent of respondents reported feeling sadness the previous day, more than double the percentage on a typical day. The number of respondents who said they felt angry was less dramatic but still significant: 20 percent, vs. 12 percent on a typical day. One day earlier, on Dec. 14, a young man had entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself.

The poll respondents were not primed to think about the massacre that had taken place in Newtown and give their opinion of the incident. They were simply asked whether they felt angry or sad or happy the day before the interview.

The survey’s value is the window it opens into the way this kind of event weighs on our minds, the collective process of grieving that we all went through then — and are going through again, right now.

Crucially, the survey also reveals when these events fade in importance from our minds. The troubling reality is that it doesn’t take long. Days after the Sandy Hook mass shooting, Americans’ reports of sadness and anger returned to their normal levels. This doesn’t mean we forgot about the shooting or no longer cared. It just means that we returned to our lives, that the horror of what had happened had moved away from the forefront of our consciousness even as the sadness and anger lingered in the background.

In a study published last year, Yinzhi Shen and I gathered data on all mass shootings from 2008 through 2016 to test whether Sandy Hook was an anomaly. We found that it was, in the sense that it affected the emotions of the entire country. But other than Sandy Hook’s reach, the pattern I noticed afterward was replicated when we used more refined methods to identify the causal impact of all mass shootings on the emotions of Americans. We found that the most horrific mass shootings with the most victims generate the largest impact on Americans’ emotions, and that the effect of mass shootings is felt most acutely in the cities and towns in which they occur, then fades quickly as the geographic distance between the incident and the survey respondent widens. We found that respondents who identify as Democrats have a larger emotional response to mass shootings than those who identify as Republicans — but, critically, Republicans also report higher levels of sadness and anger in the aftermath of mass shootings, even if their response is more muted than that of Democrats.

But the impact of mass shootings on the emotions of respondents lasts for only a few days, and then it is gone, indistinguishable from the longer time trend. This isn’t true for everyone, of course — the groups that have mobilized against gun violence in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, Parkland and other tragedies have done heroic work, facing off against the full force of the gun lobby. But the survey finding may provide a hint about why these episodes of uniquely American horror have not translated into widespread changes in legislation designed to prevent the next mass shooting or the thousands of “routine” shootings that destroy American lives, families and communities every year. Research has shown that mass shootings lead to an increase in the number of gun-related bills introduced at the state level, but with few exceptions, they tend not to lead to the passage of legislation designed to confront gun violence. In fact, the sick reality of our gun politics has led to the opposite: In Republican-controlled state legislatures, mass shootings are associated with a large increase in legislation designed to loosen gun restrictions.

To be clear, there is no evidence of a causal connection between Americans’ emotional response to this kind of incident and the behavior of state or federal legislators. But the pattern of policy responses to mass shootings suggests a link. In the days after the latest mass shooting, politicians express their outrage, their thoughts and prayers, and some put forth new proposals to finally confront the problem with meaningful legislation. A few days pass, and the raw emotions we are all feeling dissipate, even if we’re reluctant to admit it. As the attention of the nation shifts, that legislation stalls, and the organized, well-funded forces that favor guns over children’s lives flex their muscles.

For those who would turn the painful emotions of this moment into action, they have four days. There are models for ways that states can create basic requirements to make it harder for violent people to acquire guns. And, yes, formidable forces have mobilized to make sure these models don’t spread beyond states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut. But the anger and sadness most of America is feeling right now can be a driving force behind political and social movements for change. The right tells us that now is not the time to politicize the latest mass shooting. If policymakers want to harness these emotions and turn them into policy, however, they have only a couple more days to act.

Apple Meet Tree

After a week where I was verbally abused, accused, and in turn laughed and complimented and watched kids play civilly with one another in PE you see the gamut in the urban school system.

Whenever I encounter kids who demonstrate the daily stresses of living while still being a teenager, I know that the family life is one of chaos or distress.  You see it in a myriad of ways – verbalizing, organizational issues, sleeping in class, hitting, and poor academic skills.  

Any time I say you want see what dysfunction is  watch the Housewives of the  Kardashians, as despite the script “ness” of the shows these are people who have no concept of order to the disorder that runs their desperation and neediness in the same way teens do.    

And to have this escalate to violence is not shocking. We have a culture that embraces it and the idea of owing guns and solving one’s problems with said weapon is the matter of choice for many kids, regardless of color or economics.  The violence in the city streets is one problem but when you see wealthy children who live in suburbs have access to all kinds of services and opportunities who also have access to guns that levels the playing field. 

And to see the numerous shootings in schools, as in Marysville, Seattle Pacific, FSU (although he was an adult but he was an alumnus), from Columbine to well pick one… how sad, you see that it is predominately males, and the voices in their head were speaking to them for quite some time before opening fire.  

It takes a match to start a flame.  The media and the schools often contribute to this.  The Monday after the Marysville shooting, a counselor walked in to a class and said we need to make an announcement to discuss what happened on Friday.  I go what was that, lost the big game? She goes no, the shooting.  What shooting.  Hey I had been out of the country and had no idea so as she was talking I go to the Internet and at that same moment, another school, an alternative, located in the Seattle Center public facility was on lockdown as a student there arrived with a Molotov cocktail to blow up the school.  The role of the need to talk incessantly and the media onslaught has no doubt a contributory role in troubled mind and the need to seek trouble.  

What can I say except that he too had expressed a history of problems and threats of violence.  This was then followed on Tuesday of a death of a family other than a little boy who witnessed the crime when the Grandfather killed all the members and himself as his granddaughter had begun to tell others about her grandfather molesting her for years.  

The middle school, which is also down the road from me, went on lockdown in response to the shooting where she was a student there further complicating a school with a history of issues.  I do not go to that school as it full of deeply troubled children who admittedly lie about adults to not get into trouble or to garner attention, transfer pain, whatever reasoning they have to express what is within their troubled minds.  Which of course lends to the issue of credibility. I and other teachers have been victims of these sad children who will go on without the help they need in that school as long as test scores improve.    And this adds to the trauma.  Who in their right mind allows this school to remain open and not re-think what they are doing there is just another issue in public education. Denial is a street in Seattle too. 

So when the The Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut  released its report on Adam Lanza it revealed a history of problems – from mother to son.

The report is 114 pages long and available here. The Daily Mail has this recap. Here are some of the more notably points I found in the report with my own notes above.


So we go on where we kick the can down the road. These are children not cans. Instead of spending millions on absurd education reforms, look at what the dynamics of the schools population are.  Then look to see what the schools need to at least offer an opportunity for sanity and security that they are not getting at home.

Here are my ideas.  Hot meals provided at breakfast and lunch and time to eat them.  Have Social Workers, skilled therapists of all kinds available, two teachers or one teacher and one instructional assistant in every classroom.   Cameras in every class.  Tutors and labs that offer extra tutoring.  Better physical education and more of it.  Later start times and in turn later end times.   Use the time wisely to provide a thorough but diverse curriculum so that all kids at all levels are getting what they need.  And use testing to determine that but let go of it as anything other than a measure of progress and establishing a base level from which to work.

And start funding education and compensating those who man the front lines.  The excessive bureaucracy and idiocy with school boards and middle management dominate most districts. That money could be better spent on what matters  – children.  


You are not your parents unless you want to be and there comes a point where we cannot remove all these children from them but why when the parents just need support and help too.  Clearly had Mrs. Lanza had that for herself that might of helped Adam as well and in turn all those at Sandy Hook.

 
You fall from the tree but you can also be picked from it and not left to rot on the ground. 

Recall the “diagnosis” of Autism.  Well I knew that was bullshit.

Autism Spectrum Disorder or other psychiatric problems neither caused nor led to his murderous acts 

This report raises, but cannot definitively answer, the question as to whether better access to effective mental health and educational services would have prevented the tragic events at Sandy Hook. It is important to emphasize that AL’s developmental condition and mental health cannot be seen as determinative of his extreme violent behavior.

An interest in the Holmes mass shooting in Colorado.  

As far as the Holmies go…well, the .gif of him dancing on a llama was cute. I guess that’s all I can say about the whole Holmie thing since I can’t really relate to it. I don’t understand why there weren’t the “he’s just a poor misunderstood puppy who needs help” type flocking around Jared Loughner since that spiel ostensibly applied to him more than James Holmes. And speaking more generally, I don’t really understand why Aurora shooting was considered such a big deal all-around, as if such a thing had never happened before. It’s not like its 1984.

Family matters – literally and figuratively. 

[I]n a 2006 interview with a child psychiatrist, AL stated that he attributed his parents’ divorce to the fact that they must have “irritated” each other as much as they irritated him.

The report indicates Nancy Lanza had some issues of her own. When Adam was in elementary school, she wrote letters to a friend (this may be  John La Fontaine, who previously came forward with emails or letters) in which she said she had a terminal auto-immune disease, was trying to make sure her children and husband would be cared for, but she was terrified. But her medical records don’t indicate any life threatening illness:  In other words the mother was a hypochondriac with her own mental health problems. 

Despite Mrs. Lanza’s preoccupation with her health and concerns about her mortality, a review of her medical records from that time do not confirm a significant neurologic disorder, autoimmune disorder, or multiple sclerosis—the latter a diagnosis she sometimes indicated that she had. 

A medical record from her July 1999 neurology follow up indicates that all testing was unremarkable. The record notes that Mrs. Lanza was experiencing “significant stress in her life related to her husband.” Additional medical testing was recommended along with “psychotherapy for [Mrs. Lanza’s] emotional issues.”

 Interesting that while they are neurological testing her at god knows what costs you don’t see that any point to a proper referral to proper mental health treatment. It was suggested but it appears again no providers communicated with each other nor had any proper conversation with Ms. Lanza about her health versus mental health issues.  The medical industrial complex cannot be ignored for their failure in this equation.

…There is no indication that Mrs. Lanza was provided a terminal diagnosis by doctors at any time. 

…a 2012 medical record signed by Mrs. Lanza’s primary care physician indicated that the physician treated Mrs. Lanza for over eight years, had seen her many times, and had “never noticed or treated any symptoms of multiple sclerosis.” The medical form also stated that there were no related medical conditions or history….nor [according to the family] did autopsy results confirm the presence of findings consistent with MS.

At some point you would think as the mother was running to the Doctor every minute that Adam would be as well.  Apparently he was also ignored for this.

AL was anorexic (six feet tall and 112 pounds), to the point of malnutrition and resultant brain damage….Anorexia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and autism are conditions that individually increase the risk of suicide. Anorexia can produce cognitive impairment and it is likely that anorexia combined with an autism spectrum disorder and OCD compounded AL’s risk for suicide.

After an exhaustive review of records, emails, and conclusions drawn by law enforcement agencies, authors conclude that AL was not obviously psychotic in the time period leading up to the Sandy Hook shooting, though he had a history of depression and suicidal ideation that can be seen in his emails during 2011 and 2012.

There is no such thing as the “tipping point” or that he just suddenly “snapped” another fallacy:

Authors conclude that there was not one thing that was necessarily the tipping point driving AL to commit the Sandy Hook shooting. Rather there was a cascade of events, many self-imposed, that included: loss of school; absence of work; disruption of the relationship with his one friend; virtually no personal contact with family; virtually total and increasing isolation; fear of losing his home and of a change in his relationship with Mrs. Lanza, his only caretaker and connection; worsening OCD; depression and anxiety; profound and possibly worsening anorexia; and an increasing obsession with mass murder occurring in the total absence of any engagement with the outside world. AL increasingly lived in an alternate universe in which ruminations about mass shootings were his central preoccupation.

 This was not spontaneous nor without planning (again read Columbine)

The attack on Sandy Hook Elementary appears to have been a purposefully thought-out and planned attack—AL did not just “snap.” He visited the school’s website on numerous occasions. He had looked at the student handbook and viewed security procedures at the school.

[T]here is no connection in the literature between AL’s developmental profile and an increased likelihood of violent actions.

Mental health is not the sole reason, explanation or reasoning for why:

The likelihood of an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder and/or severe problems with anxiety and obsessive compulsive tendencies committing an act of pre-meditated violence, much less one of AL’s magnitude, is rare. Individuals with these mental health or developmental disorders are more likely to internalize (that is, to feel distressed emotionally or to be confused, socially inappropriate or inept, and sometimes to harm themselves inadvertently or intentionally) than to externalize (that is, to act out aggressively so as to harm others).

An obsession with other mass murders:

There is no way to adequately explain why AL was obsessed with mass shootings and how or why he came to act on this obsession. In the end, only he, and he alone, bears responsibility for this monstrous act.

We have a long road to resolve the matters of what defines a mass shooter and how to prevent such from happening. But the NRA has found that it is video games and being crazy the problem and their resolution is to provide everyone with guns.  Yes that clearly will work to have even more arms available to fragile individuals who are looking for ways to resolve the pain in their minds.   This is suicide by cop and by mass murder with mass attention.  They will not be ignored on the way out as they felt they were when they were alive.  Tragic. Grim. Pathetic.

More lives, more time wasted and the resolution is more laws.  That is clearly not working.

One Sub to Another

This Memoriam stood out to me on two counts: She was a Substitute Teacher, as am I. And the other is she was living in a multi generational home, with her mother out of financial necessity.  Her story parallels mine in many many ways.  And on the day she died I was cleaning up fake human shit left for me by a student and I was deeply distressed.  Then this occurred and it made me think I am lucky or am I?  

I don’t think anyone going to work, especially, an elementary school, that a young Lost Boy would walk into a school and murder innocents in every sense of the word.

The talk about our gun culture and violence is a discussion long overdue.  But as I said in the last post its one that is not the can kicked down the road, this is one buried under the rug.  Ironic, as now we are burying 30 bodies this week from both shootings. 

These shootings were not about mental illness, background checks or buying guns.  In one case the weapons were stolen, the second they were legally owned by one of the victims who taught her sons to shoot and care for weapons. The family that shoots together apparently die together.  From the hands of the mother to the son, I am sure that was not her intent.

And having mental health checks are absurd. First of all equating mental illness as violent is well “nuts” and if you are that nuts you aren’t going to actually tell anyone. So having said mental health checks will accomplish what? Getting everyone in America into therapy? Well that is not a bad idea. But the idea that violating our rights by having our mental health checked for owning a gun. Sorry but even I think this is “nuts.” 

And now the nut job fringe think having guns in the schools and classrooms are the answer. Yes finally a new way of ensuring those classroom management issues.

The teachers that lost their lives that day clearly should be blaming the Union for not  letting them pack heat.  As a Substitute would we have that right? We have none. We are day labor akin to those standing out of front of a Home Depot. We have no union rights nor protections. We have no pensions, no sick leave and no health care.  We are literally disposable and easily replaceable.

We have many many problems in this country and we simply refuse to have them. We “unlike” or “unfollow” anyone who dares threaten us to change our minds or compromise our beliefs. And we clearly are not teaching or learning anything. Those damn Unions!

We have a sick history of gun culture in this country.   And like most of our laws and regulations they are influenced by a few – an Oligarchy; a minority of individuals with the very typical non-profit acronym dictating legislation and influencing our politics. So much for a Democracy.  And this is the other problem, the very groups that take Governmental money to operate and function actually then use that same money to influence and control the Government, while decrying Government.  Is this irony or hypocrisy or just weird?

Keep sweeping this under the rug its been working so far or has it? 

In Memoriam

Last September, Lauren Rousseau’s phone rang with a hard-won opportunity: a teaching position at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The job, as a full-time substitute, offered little in the way of security or stability. It meant accepting a different classroom assignment on a daily basis without benefits or the promise of a permanent position. The pay was a meager $75 a day.

Ms. Rousseau, 30 years old, was thrilled.

“Oh she called so excited, she was just on cloud nine,” recalled her father, Gilles Rousseau, a photographer from Southbury, Conn. “She had such big plans. She would just go on and on about the kids.”

Ms. Rousseau’s mother said the oldest of her three children decided early to be a teacher. She still has an old photo of a very young Lauren standing at a chalkboard, her toys at her feet.
“She used to talk to her dolls like she was their teacher,” said Terri Rousseau, a journalist who lives in Danbury, Conn.

After graduating with a degree in education from the University of Connecticut in 2004, Ms. Rousseau got her masters degree from the University of Bridgeport in 2006 with the goal of becoming an elementary-school teacher. But teacher layoffs in the area in recent years made even substitute jobs scarce.

She had a lucky link to Sandy Hook. Dawn Hochsprung, the school principal who died trying to stop the gunman, was a family friend. Ms. Hochsprung’s husband, George, had once been Ms. Rousseau’s grade-school teacher.

Ms. Rousseau had already moved back into her childhood home where her divorced mother still lived. To make the teaching job work, she put in after-school hours behind the counter of a busy Starbucks just off the interstate at the Connecticut-New York border, a demanding second job that supplied health insurance. She often drove directly to the coffee shop from school, changing clothes in her Honda Civic to save time.

Several chances for non-substitute teaching job looked promising but eventually fell apart, and her father said that she had struggled to pay her bills.

In her free time, Ms. Rousseau kept up with friends online and played with her cat, Laila, a regular feature in family photos and on her Christmas cards. A favorite getaway was a train trip to a Broadway show in Manhattan, preferably midweek for discounted tickets.

Last year, things started looking up. An Internet date blossomed into a full-fledged romance. She went to parties and Yankees games with her boyfriend, Tony. There was talk of marriage, her mother said.

“I’ll take some comfort that the last year of her life was her happiest,” the elder Ms. Rousseau said on Saturday.

On Friday night, she said her daughter had planned to see the new film “The Hobbit” and had baked Hobbit-themed cupcakes for a friend’s birthday.

The family’s initial optimism early in the day that Ms. Rousseau had survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School turned to dread as night fell without word from her. Calls and text messages to her cellphone went unanswered, and at 1 a.m. Saturday a Connecticut state trooper knocked on her father’s door. The officer was flanked by a minister and counselors.

The officials offered no details as to how or where Ms. Rousseau died, saying only that she had been identified among the six adults and 20 children who had died at the school.