NEWTOWN, Conn. – Many of the survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting graduates on Wednesday.
As they get ready to go to college, they honor their fallen classmates who should be there with them.
Twenty first-graders and six teachers were murdered that day.
Twelve years later, 60 members of that first class graduated from Newtown High School.
The victims will be honored at Wednesday’s graduation ceremony, but details have not yet been released.
Survivors reflect as they graduate
Emma Ehrens was in 10th grade at Sandy Hook Elementary when the shooting happened.
“The shooter actually came into my classroom. So I had to watch all my friends and teachers get killed, and I had to run for my life when I was six years old,” Ehrens said.
She escaped when the gunman stopped to reload.
“Just growing up with the fear, and the what ifs of what could have happened if I had stayed? Because I would be next,” Ehrens said.
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Graduation day brings mixed emotions, just like other milestones.
“I mean, you’ve been waiting for this day your whole life, since you were in kindergarten. You just can’t wait to graduate. And it felt so far away for so long. But like now it’s here and you” We are ready, but I think we can’t forget that there’s a whole part of our class missing,” said survivor Lilly Wasinak.
“So even when you go to the prom, you think, what if they were my date? Or, you know, what if they were my significant other? What if they could walk on stage with me,” said survivor Ella Seaver. .
Shooting motivates their plea
The graduating seniors say their fallen classmates are motivated their plea against gun ownership. Just last week, some of them met with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House.
They say even as they begin their next chapter, they won’t stop fighting for change.
“I knew I wanted to do something more since I was younger, when the tragedy first happened. I wanted to make something more out of something so terrible, and that these children and educators didn’t die in vain,” Wasilnak said.
Since the Sandy Hook shooting, there have been more than 4,200 mass shootings in the United States, including several dozen at schools.
