Contrary
to Whitney's claim, there is no Life Star helicopter service stationed out of
nearby DanburyHospital. The closest Life Star is
actually based almost 40 miles away in Hartford.
"The injured people were transported by ambulance to DanburyHospital,"
wrote Mick West on his website Metabunk. "Just 11.4 miles
away by road, straight down a freeway, accessible in less than 14 minutes.
Ambulances were already there. Using an ambulance minimizes the movement of the
patient. Calling for a helicopter would take more time. The ambulance was
quicker and safer."
Thorn caps off his interview with Whitney by
opining that "CNN's Anderson Cooper deliberately tried to deceive viewers by
airing video footage of seven police officers charging across a parking lot
toward a school" and that "[Anderson] passed off these visuals as occurring at
SHES, when in actuality they were filmed 1.5 miles away at St. Rose of Lima
School during an 'active shooter drill.'"
Despite what Thorn and Whitney claim, there was no "active shooter drill" at
St. Rose of LimaSchool on the day of the shooting. The
officers captured in the aforementioned video
footage had responded there in response to reports of suspicious persons.
Photos taken of individuals detained at the scene suggest that these were
parents that had rushed there to check on their children.
Concerned/Agitated Parents Waiting Outside of St. Rose of Lima School
(Image by Newtown Post-Examiner) Details DMCA
Local news agency Connecticut
Post covered the story:
"Police swarmed St. Rose of LimaSchool on Church
Hill Road in Newtown
Friday afternoon, hours after the shooting at nearby Sandy
Hook Elementary School," they wrote. "Neil Curry, whose 11-year-old son Kevin is in fifth
grade at the school, said the school was put in lock down three times during
the day. Curry said a person was found 'lurking' outside a kindergarten class
room. Later, an 'agitated' person was reported inside the St. Rose of LimaChurch
near the school."
CNN later used the footage in a montage of events that transpired that day.
Most reasonable people who examined this footage would conclude there was no
attempt by CNN to portray the incident as having occurred at SHES.
In his next segment, Seeing
is Believing, Thorn suggests that the government may be hiding video footage of
events that occurred inside SHES because, "[a]ccording to news reports, in 2012
an entire visual monitoring system had been installed at the school with, one
would assume, some type of recording apparatus."
The news reports Thorn refers to are based solely on a poorly-worded,
poorly-researched Hartford Courant article posted on the day of the shooting. The title
erroneously stated that slain Principal Dawn Hochsprung had just "Outlined New
Security Procedures for Sandy Hook Elementary."
To substantiate their claim, the Courant posted an undated letter they had
obtained from the SHES website, which begins: "Our district will be implementing a security system in
all elementary schools as part of our ongoing efforts to ensure student safety.
As usual, exterior doors will be locked during the day. Every visitor will be
required to ring the doorbell at the front entrance and the office staff will
use a visual monitoring system to allow entry."
The letter was addressed to "Members of our Sandy Hook Family" and ends with
"Sincerely, Dawn Hochsprung."
Based on this article alone, it has been widely assumed that Hochsprung had
written the letter to introduce a newly installed security system, even though
the letter mentions nothing about installation of hardware.
After significant online research, this writer--along with significant
assistance from Mike Flagg of Sandy
Hook Tragedy: Focus on Facts--conclusively
determined that Hochsprung, who began working at SHES in 2010, was not the
author of this letter and that the letter was actually written in 2006 as an
introduction to a security
system that was installed at three Newtown Elementary schools that same year.
The exact same letter, for instance, was found on the website of Newtown's HawleyElementary
School, addressed to "Members of out Hawley
Family" and ending with "Sincerely, Jo-Anne Peters," that school's principal.
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