By John Christoffersen
NEWTOWN, Connecticut (AP) — A gunman killed 27 people, including 18 young children, at a U.S. school Friday morning, an official said, in one of the worst school shootings in the country's history.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was under way.
State police, in their first hurried briefing, said only students and school staff were killed. Police said the shooter was dead inside the school, and the scene was secure. Children, some crying, had been rushed from the building.
The White House said President Barack Obama had been notified and that he had “enormous sympathy for families that are affected."
The attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School was the latest of several mass shootings in the U.S. this year, and it approached the deadly scope of the Virginia Tech university massacre in 2007 that left 32 dead.
This time, the victims were young children. Photos from the scene showed frightened students being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders. Children told their parents they had heard bangs and, at one point, a scream over the intercom.
The shooting shocked a small, tranquil community in one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of New York City. The last news items posted before the shooting on the website of the tiny newspaper, The Newtown Bee, lamented cracked headstones at a local cemetery and asked residents to “share 2012 memories."
Anguished parents came running Friday morning when they heard the news.
A law enforcement official in Washington said the attacker was a 20-year-old man with ties to the school and that one of the guns was a .223-caliber rifle. The official also said that New Jersey State Police were searching a location in that state in connection with the shootings. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.
Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs, and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.
“It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said.
Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his 9-year-old sister at the school. He said his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.
“Everyone was just traumatized," he said.
Richard Wilford said his 7-year-old son, Richie, said he heard a noise that “sounded like what he described as cans falling."
The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.
“There's no words," Wilford said. “It's sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him."
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the administration would “do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement."
Already this year, a gunman killed 12 people at a Colorado theater, and another gunman killed six people before killing himself at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Carney wouldn't say whether the shooting would make gun control a higher priority on the president's agenda, but he said there would be a day for discussion on that policy issue.
“But I don't think today is that day," he said.
Associated Press writer Michael Melia contributed to this report from Hartford.