Skip to content
Navigating a New Political Landscape: View real-time updates about the impact of and Northeastern’s response to recent political changes.
Apply
Stories

Grief and contemplation. At site of Sandy Hook shooting on 10th anniversary, Northeastern experts reflect

People in this story

(AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson).

The two visitors from Northeastern have devoted their work to the crisis of gun violence in America. On Wednesday afternoon they stood atop a shallow hill overlooking a memorial to the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. On this day 10 years ago, a 20-year-old man with a semi-automatic rifle killed 20 first-grade students and six educators at their school in this quaint town 80 miles from New York City. 

“I was at the State Department and I saw Newtown come up on the news channel,” recalled Sarah Peck, a former U.S. diplomat who serves as director of UnitedOnGuns, a non-partisan initiative of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern’s School of Law. “I have a brother who lives here. His wife is a teacher, his daughters were in the school system, and I’m seeing a mass shooting unfold on the TV at work.”

Ten years later, Peck made her way down the hill with James Alan Fox, a Northeastern criminology professor who has been studying mass shootings for four decades. They were making their first visits to the memorial, which opened last month.

Continue reading at News@Northeastern.

More Stories

The value of the dollar bill, pictured on Friday, May 23, 2025, is depreciated. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

The value of the dollar is dropping. What does that mean for Americans and the world?

05.30.2025
Drones have become a game-changer in the Russia-Ukraine War, says Mai’a Cross, a professor of political science at Northeastern. Photo by Roman Chop/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

How cheap combat drones could turn Ukraine into a ‘defense powerhouse’ in Europe

05.29.2025
Generation Z is the first generation in several decades to not lose their religious affiliation as they age. (Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images)

Why is Gen Z more religious than previous generations?

06.10.25
All Stories