When the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission meets for the first time on Thursday, its 16 members will get an update on the status of the police investigation into the deadly school shooting in Newtown.
After officially receiving their charge from Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the commission will hear from Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III, who will review the status of the Sandy Hook investigation.
Sandy Hook School remains closed while police continue their investigation, so students are attending class in neighboring Monroe for the remainder of the school year. A great deal of work went into making Monroe's Chalk Hill building feel like Sandy Hook School for students, in an effort to ease the transition back to school for the children, whose school was the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting that claimed the life of 20 first graders and six educators.
While police have identified the shooter as 20-year-old Adam Lanza — the Newtown resident took his own life that day, as well as his mother's — a motive remains ellusive.
Expert Testimony
Following the update from Sedensky, the commission will hear from former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and University of Virginia School of Law Professor Richard Bonnie, who will each discuss how their states reacted to the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, respectively.
At the time of the Columbine massacre in 1999, Ritter was district attorney for Denver and became a member of the Columbine Review Commission, which conducted a review of the tragedy for then-Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. Ritter was elected Governor of Colorado in 2007 and served until 2011.
Bonnie is director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, and serves as chair of the Virginia Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. Following the Virginia Tech tragedy in 2007, he served as a consultant to then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s Virginia Tech Review Panel.
Meeting Will Be Broadcast Live
Thursday’s meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. in Room 2C of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. The meeting will be broadcast live on television and online by the Connecticut Network (CT-N).
The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission is a 16-member panel of experts created by Malloy to review current policy and make specific recommendations in the areas of public safety, with . Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson is the chairman.
