Like many of their contemporaries, the members of the Newtown High School class of 2024 will graduate with a mixture of joy and bittersweet feelings.
But 60 of the more than 300 children from Newtown, Connecticut, who received their diplomas on Wednesday, will also be burdened by having survived one of the bloodiest school massacres in US history.
Knowing that twenty of their classmates would not be able to accompany them, they crossed the stage.
Adam Lanza shot his mother on December 14, 2012, then stole her firearms and drove to the neighboring school.
He killed six adults, including the principal and four instructors, and twenty children, all in the first grade and around the age of six or seven.
Lanza then committed suicide as the authorities neared the school.
Well-known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to reimburse Sandy Hook victims and their families for nearly one billion dollars after he stated that gun control supporters used actors to stage the killing as a fictitious event.
Over ten years after the atrocity, the attack survivors commemorated the victims with a moment of silence as they celebrated their graduation.
