this time. it s such a sensitive story. a shooting at an elementary school, k-4. nearly 700 students there. we ll keep you posted as we hear more. jon: well, happening now to one of the big political stories coming out of washington, it didn t take long for the blame game to start. this after ambassador susan rice withdrew her name from consideration to become secretary of state. nbc s white house correspondent chuck todd was quick to blame what he called conservative media. listen. there were legitimate questions to ask about the benghazi story, but the idea that she belonged in the center of those attacks never made a lot of sense. she sort of became a victim of this. jon: so what about that? fair? let s check in with our news watch panel, judith miller, a pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter and kirsten powers, a daily beast columnist. i guess chuck todd would have us believe that susan rice,
running until they reach the firehouse. the firehouse is key. you may have seen it in a few of our shots, it s where the local authorities are telling the parents to go where they can be reunited with some of the students there. and this is an ongoing process, parents being reunited with students. yet we re waiting on details about the injuries and also the fatalities that we re just learning about. jon: again, it s still developing there. outside danbury, connecticut, a place called newtown, an elementary school, k-4 grades. all of the front office staff as far as we can tell are females. the principal, the vice principal, some of the school leadership, all women. whether that figures into what happened here, we don t yet know. but we re continuing to keep an eye on the situation. we ll get more developing, more details as they develop, try the wring you bring you the very wring you bring you the very latest just ahead on happening. now n. clear, huh? i m not juice or fancy wate
students and protect the students while this catastrophic event was going on, and i m pretty sure everybody s been reunited in terms of children and families. jenna: i m getting some more breaking news into our newsroom from your local newspaper, the hartford current, that says that the shooting took place inside the kindergarten classroom. can you confirm that for us? i cannot. jenna: okay. mr. mayor, what do you think s important for you as we take a look at this community, again, a k-4 school, nearly 700 students. have you ever had something like this happen before in the community? you know, this is a very quiet, peaceful area of the country. no, we haven t. but i will say that there s a reason why we have all these emergency management plans and they work, and this is the reason why we even drill with kindergarten students about how to evacuate the building appropriately. this is why. so with the right planning, we avoided what could have been an even worse, catastrophic event
of the tars. that is potentially a bit of visual good news but again it s too early to tell. there are the tarps there. they are as far as we can tell unoccupied. that is a bit of good news. these developments are still very sketchy. police obviously have their handful just conducting the investigation. again as jenna said the report is that the gunman is dead. that has come from two separate sources and the early reports of two gunmen have not been verified although it s looking less and less like that may be a reality. jenna: such a good point. the superintendent s office of the district, the secretary there would not even confirm the shooting about 45 minutes ago. so still trying to piece together so much information. as we show you the students, we want to point out to you, this elementary school of nearly 900 students has k-4. so you re dealing with very young children that are at that school. we listened to local news reports that said according to the local hospitals there
details while he himself was heading there he did say this appeared to be a very serious shooting at that school. we re talking about the sandy hook elementary school. that is a k-4 school, about the 600 students on dickinson drive. to give you an idea where that is located, i don t know if we get pinpoint news tracker up. we re in western connecticut. just below the bottom of our screen would be i-84. if you travel through i-84 through connecticut just before danbury before exits 10 and 11, just approaching the new york state line but not quite there. this is in newtown. a very busy area. many of those roads access on to and off the highway. this is an area right now completely locked down. we have crews all over the state covering other stories this morning where state police happened to be and they reported to us state troopers from all over the state of connecticut are racing to this location. what strikes me reported