A summary of the long awaited state police report on the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting will be released on Nov. 25, according to victims' family members briefed in the past few days.
Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky will release his summary on that date and a full state police report, which sources said will be thousands of pages, will be released at a date yet to be determined.
Sedensky and state police detectives met with some of the families of the 26 victims of Adam Lanza's shooting spree on Thursday night. Another group had a conference call with him on Friday so he could go over his report, which is likely to be between 40-50 pages.
One family member told The Courant that there wasn't much in Sedensky's briefing that wasn't already known to the families about the shooting.
Lanza, 20, shot his way through the front glass entrance of the school on the morning of Dec. 14 and killed 20 first-graders and six adults. He fired 154 shots from a Bushmaster .223 before killing himself with a pistol. Beforehand, Lanza shot and killed his mother in their Newtown home.
A family member said Sedensky told the families that none of the children's names will be included in either his summary or the larger report. He also assured them that while there will be photos of the school, there will be none of the areas where victims were shot.
No date has been set for the release of the full state police report. Once Sedensky signs off on the investigation as being completed, state police plan to release their report online.
A family member said state police detectives asked the families at the meeting whether they wanted the report released before the anniversary, between the anniversary and Christmas or after the holidays. There was no clear consensus, the family member said.
Sources said that report probably will be heavily redacted, with transcripts of 911 calls, some witness statements of children and all crime scene photos removed.
Sedensky has gone to court to fight the release of the 911 calls. A judge could rule the same week that Sedensky's summary is released.
Last week, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said it was time to release the report so that the families had time to review it well before the one-year anniversary of the shooting.
Copyright 2013 - The Hartford Courant
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
