Claim seeks $100 million for child survivor of Connecticut school shooting

A U.S. flag hangs over stockings left as a memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, along a fence surrounding the Sandy Hook Cemetery in Newtown, Connecticut December 27, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Adrees Latif

By Mary Ellen Godin

MERIDEN, Connecticut | Fri Dec 28, 2012 7:36pm EST

MERIDEN, Connecticut (Reuters) - A $100 million claim on behalf of a 6-year-old survivor is the first legal action to come out of the Connecticut school shooting that left 26 children and adults dead two weeks ago.

The unidentified client, referred to as Jill Doe, heard "cursing, screaming, and shooting" over the school intercom when the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, opened fire, according to the claim filed by New Haven-based attorney Irv Pinsky.

"As a consequence, the ... child has sustained emotional and psychological trauma and injury, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined," the claim said.

Pinsky said he filed a claim on Thursday with state Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr., whose office must give permission before a lawsuit can be filed against the state.

"We all know its going to happen again," Pinsky said on Friday. "Society has to take action."

Twenty children and six adults were shot dead on December 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The children were all 6 and 7 years old.

Pinsky's claim said that the state Board of Education, Department of Education and Education Commissioner had failed to take appropriate steps to protect children from "foreseeable harm."

It said they had failed to provide a "safe school setting" or design "an effective student safety emergency response plan and protocol."

Pinsky said he was approached by the child's parents within a week of the shooting.

The shooting, which also left the gunman dead, has prompted extensive debate about gun control and the suggestion by the National Rifle Association that schools be patrolled by armed guards. Police have said the gunman killed his mother at their home in Newtown before going to the school.

(Reporting by Mary Ellen Godin Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

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Videogames under fire, Hollywood lays low after school shooting

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:57pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The multi-billion-dollar videogame industry came under scrutiny on Wednesday after Hollywood canceled, postponed or played down a slew of movies and TV shows with violent content in the wake of last week's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

In Washington, Senator John Rockefeller called for a national study of the impact of violent videogames on children and a review of the rating system.

Although investigators in Newtown, Connecticut, have given no motive for Friday's shooting rampage, some U.S. media have reported that the 20-year-old gunman played popular videogame "Call of Duty" - in which players conduct simulated warfare missions - in the basement of his home.

The gunman, Adam Lanza, killed himself at the scene after gunning down 20 young children, six school employees and his mother.

Rockefeller said he had long been concerned about the impact of violent games and videos on children.

"Major corporations, including the video game industry, make billions on marketing and selling violent content to children. They have a responsibility to protect our children," Rockefeller said in a statement.

The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the $78 billion U.S. videogame industry, on Wednesday offered its "heartfelt prayers and condolences" to the Newtown families.

But it said in a statement that "the search for meaningful solutions must consider the broad range of actual factors that may have contributed to this tragedy.

"Any such study needs to include the years of extensive research that has shown no connection between entertainment and real-life violence," the association said.

NEW 'CALL OF DUTY,' 'HALO' GAMES RAKE IN BILLIONS

Activision Blizzard's latest title in its "Call of Duty" franchise - "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" - hit $1 billion in sales two weeks after its launch last month.

Other popular videogames include Microsoft's "Halo 4," in which players kill evil aliens. The game racked up $220 million in global sales on its launch day in November.

Mike Hickey, an analyst at National Alliance Capital Markets, said backlashes against videogames were not rare, but he was unaware of an instance of games being pulled off store shelves in the past.

When the Columbine school shooting happened in 1999, there was a similar outcry because the two perpetrators were students who played the shooter game "Doom," Hickey told Reuters.

Executives at Hollywood movie studios and TV networks have mostly laid low this week as Americans seek answers to the Newtown slaughter, and discuss how to prevent similar gun violence.

However, content seen as sensitive has been pulled from the airwaves, including an episode of the SyFy TV series "Haven" that contained violent scenes in a high school setting, and the premiere next week of a TLC show called "Best Funeral Ever."

Discovery Channel canceled a third season of its reality series "American Guns" about a family of gun makers. Some radio stations stopped playing pop star Ke$ha's bubbly new single "Die Young" to avoid any potential offense.

Glitzy red carpet premieres for violent upcoming new movies "Jack Reacher," starring Tom Cruise, and "Django Unchained" starring Jamie Foxx, were canceled out of respect for the Newtown victims, but both movies will open in theaters as planned in the next seven days.

INSENSITIVE TODAY, OK TOMORROW?

The Parents TV Council praised the response of the entertainment industry this week, but said it shouldn't be confined to the immediate aftermath of such tragedies.

"If a television network changes its programming because of content that could be insensitive today, why would that same content be appropriate at a later time?," council president Tim Winter said in a statement.

"If producers and performers rightly question whether their industry is complicit in creating a violent media culture that feeds real-life tragedies, why would there be a later time to produce and distribute more of it?," Winter added.

Most major Hollywood stars have remained silent about the potential influence of violent movies on U.S. society. But "Django Unchained" star Foxx was quoted as saying the movie industry should not shirk its responsibility.

"We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn't have a sort of influence," Foxx was quoted as saying while promoting the film in New York.

Director Quentin Tarantino called the Newtown shootings "a horrible tragedy," but in an interview with CNN on Monday he declined to link screen violence with real life events.

"This has gone back all the way down to Shakespeare's days ... when there's violence in the street, the cry becomes 'blame the playmaker.' And you know, I actually think that's a very facile argument to pin on something that's a real life tragedy," Tarantino said.

(Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak in San Francisco, editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Utah boy charged with bringing gun to school, cites fears of Newtown attack

SALT LAKE CITY | Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:26am EST

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - An 11-year-old Utah boy who said he brought a gun to school to protect himself from a Newtown-style attack, then brandished the pistol at three classmates during recess, has been detained on assault and weapons charges, a school spokesman said on Tuesday.

The boy, a Utah sixth-grader, took the unloaded .22-caliber handgun to his school south of Salt Lake City in his backpack on Monday, a spokesman for the Granite School District said.

Some ammunition was also found in the backpack, but it did not appear to go with the gun, said the spokesman, Ben Horsley.

No one was injured in the incident, which occurred as jittery parents, teachers and students around the country faced their first day back at school since 20 children and six adult staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were shot to death by a lone gunman last Friday.

The 11-year-old student at Utah's West Kearns Elementary, who was not publicly identified, has insisted he brought the gun to school to "protect himself and his friends from a Connecticut-style incident," Horsley said.

However, the boy is accused of waving the gun at three classmates on a soccer field during recess. Later on Monday, one of those students and a second classmate alerted their teacher, who "immediately took the student into custody and took him down to the principal's office," Horsley said.

After being briefly questioned, the boy admitted bringing the gun to school, and the weapon was recovered minutes later.

Some parents questioned the decision not to initiate a security "lockdown," but school administrators reasoned that it made no sense to risk alarming students when the threat was so quickly averted, Horsley said.

The boy was booked into a local juvenile detention center on Monday night on one count of possession of a deadly weapon on school property and three counts of aggravated assault. He was also suspended from school indefinitely.

Horsley described the boy's parents as shocked by the incident and cooperating with investigators, who found the gun belonged to a relative who has been living temporarily with the boy's family.

He said the community was "rightfully" shaken by the incident. "Because of the tragic occurrence in Connecticut, people's emotions with respect to children's safety is right at the surface, and we're just as concerned as the parents."

Because the incident unfolded less than an hour before classes were dismissed, parents could not be notified until well after the school day had ended, and only then by telephone, he said.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Shumaker)

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