Newtown Holds First Funerals for the Victims

Family, friends gather to mourn 6-year-old boys
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 17, 2012 3:01 PM CST
Newtown Holds First Funerals for the Victims
Families embrace while surrounded by children wearing Newtown school shirts outside the funeral for six-year-old shooting victim Jack Pinto in Newtown, Conn., Monday, Dec. 17, 2012.   (Charles Krupa)

A grief-stricken Newtown today began burying the littlest victims of the school massacre, starting with two 6-year-old boys—one of them a big football fan, the other a mischievous, whip-smart youngster whose twin sister survived the rampage. Family, friends, and townspeople streamed to two funeral homes to say goodbye to Jack Pinto, who loved the New York Giants and idolized their star wide receiver, and Noah Pozner, who liked to figure out how things worked mechanically. "If Noah had not been taken from us, he would have become a great man. He would been a wonderful husband and a loving father," his uncle Alexis Haller told mourners, according to remarks he provided to the AP.

Both services were closed to the news media. Noah's twin, Arielle, who was assigned to a different classroom, survived the killing frenzy by 20-year-old Adam Lanza that left 20 children and six adults dead last week at Sandy Hook Elementary. At Jack's Christian service, hymns rang out from inside the funeral home, where the boy lay in an open casket. A mourner, Gwendolyn Glover, said the service carried a message of comfort and protection, particularly for other children. "The message was: You're secure now. The worst is over," she said. The funeral program bore a quotation from the Book of Revelation: "God shall wipe away all tears. There shall be no more death. Neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." (More Connecticut school shooting stories.)

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