Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Michelle and Curtis Urbina,
whose daughter attends Sandy Hook Elementary School, embraced in their
living room after hearing the news of the massacre in Newtown, Conn.
NEWTOWN, Conn. — A few minutes before 10 Friday morning, Michelle Urbina
was speaking with a customer at the small bank branch that she manages
in Bethel, Conn., when her assistant broke in.
“What school does your daughter go to?”
“Sandy Hook,” Ms. Urbina replied.
“There’s been a shooting there,” her assistant said.
As Ms. Urbina headed for the door, her phone began buzzing with text
messages from friends and other parents. It is a 20-minute drive from
Bethel to the school. The landscape rolled by unseen; a friend from the
other end of town spoke to her on her cellphone, relaying news from
someone who was monitoring a police scanner. None of it told her what
she wanted to know: What about Lenie, her 9-year-old daughter?
From another direction, Ms. Urbina’s husband, Curtis, drove their sport
utility vehicle along winding roads toward the school. In the back seat,
their 3-year-old son, Harry, was buckled into his car seat, wearing
only his pajamas and a coat.
Just about five years ago, the Urbinas moved to Sandy Hook. He had grown
up in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. She was raised on the Upper East
Side of Manhattan. They fell in love with the peace of their friendly
small town.
“We wanted the big backyard,” Ms. Urbina said. “The fresh air. The
country. The good schools. It’s an idyllic small town — not
materialistic flashy people, just people who smile and say hello to
you.”
They knew everyone at Lenie’s school, or so it seemed. Mr. Urbina, a
stay-at-home-father, coaches youth wrestling in town, and was in the gym
or cafeteria several times a week for practice. Just the night before,
the Urbinas had gone to the fourth-grade holiday chorale celebration,
overseen by the principal, Dawn Hochsprung.
Even using back roads on Friday morning, Mr. Urbina still had to park a
quarter-mile away. He scooped his son under his arm and began running,
little Harry giggling at the game of it. “It’s utter fear,” he said.
“Your heart stops. Your chest doesn’t move. I’m a dad. What can I do?
I’m helpless.”
But running.
Ms. Urbina landed in a knot of traffic that forms on even the best of
days in the little downtown. She peeled out of it and pulled into a
restaurant lot, parking so fast that she hit a concrete bumper. The
school was a good quarter-mile away, and up a hill. She ran, the heels
of her work shoes drilling into her feet.
Near the school, Mr. Urbina saw the volunteer firefighters, who pointed
him toward their firehouse. The students at Sandy Hook “are always doing
fire drills,” Mr. Urbina said. “And incident drill. The fire station is
their gathering point. The kids know it.”
It was packed; the little ones, many in tears, were being soothed by
their teachers. Parents were already there, scouring the room for their
children. Across the room, Mr. Urbina saw his daughter’s fourth-grade
teacher.
There was Lenie. They ran into each other’s arms, each sobbing. “I had
to put her down because other parents who weren’t so nearby needed to
know about their kids, and I wanted to get word to them,” he said.
First, though, he sent a text to his wife.
“I have Lenie,” it read.
Ms. Urbina chugged into the firehouse to reunite with her daughter. She
let four friends know their children were safe. In the firehouse,
friends were looking for their sons and daughters, so many getting the
terrifying news that their children were “unaccounted for.”
The Urbinas drove home together, and for a time, Ms. Urbina kept the
television off, but then decided it was futile. Her bosses at JPMorgan
Chase called to offer to drive her anywhere to help. She was grateful,
but her tasks were intensely local. Lenie, who was in gym class when the
trouble started, told her parents that over the public address system,
she had heard someone say, “Put your hands up,” and then bang after
bang.
Late in the afternoon, Mr. Urbina drove home a boy he was taking care of
while his parents awaited word on a brother who was unaccounted for.
Walking back to his own house, he glanced at his wife, shook his head,
and said, “It’s confirmed.”
Ms. Urbina turned away. “I’m sleeping,” she said. “I’m speaking to you, but I am surely asleep.”
She called a friend on the other side of town, who lived near the
restaurant where she had jumped from her car to sprint to the school. “I
thought the car might still be running,” she reported. “It wasn’t. But
the keys were still in it.”
Source: www.nytimes.com
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