The sweet smiles of 28 youngsters posing for their first school picture shone out across newspaper front pages Thursday. The effect was more heart-wrenching than any report on the evening news that 16 of them had been slain.
This small town in Scotland was grieving Thursday for the 16 kindergarten students and their teacher, gunned down by a local man who burst into their school gym and shot them to death before killing himself.Wednesday's shooting was the worst in modern British history.
Twelve other children were wounded in the massacre, several badly, including a 5-year-old boy who was shot three times. Only one student in the room was not shot.
"There were little bodies in piles dotted around the room and items of children's clothing like shoes . . . around the floor," said the first ambulance man to reach Dunblane Primary School.
"The strange thing . . . was the virtual silence that we encountered as we walked in. Children were just sitting there in total shock with bullet wounds to their limbs and bodies, unable to cry out or speak," John McEwen was quoted as telling The Sun newspaper.
Residents of this close-knit, bucolic town at the edge of the Scottish Highlands placed flowers, cards, teddy bears and other toys on the sidewalk outside the school, where frightened parents had waited Wednesday to find out if their children were among the dead.
One card with the flowers read: "May God take better care of you than this world ever can."
"Everyone knows at least one family who's involved," said Moira Pope. Five-year-old John Petrie, who lived next door, was among the dead.
A doctor treating the wounded at Stirling Royal Infirmary learned that one of her own children was among the dead, said Dr. Jack Beattie. He declined to identify her.
Authorities said the 700-pupil school would be closed until Monday.
Police said disgruntled former youth worker Thomas Hamilton walked through the school's front entrance just after 9:30 a.m., armed with four handguns. He headed through the dining room, past the assembly hall and into the gym.
There, he opened fire and killed 11 girls and five boys, all ages 5 and 6, and their teacher, Gwenne Mayor, 45.
The ambulance man said Mayor looked as though she had been trying to shield the children from the bullets.
"She was directly in front of a group of children who were all beyond hope," McEwen said, who called the scene a "medieval vision of hell."
"One boy of about 5 was sitting on the floor looking confused and shocked pointing at a bullet hole in his arm," McEwen was quoted as saying. "He obviously couldn't grasp what had happened and was so shocked he couldn't cry. His arm was hanging limp and useless at his side, and he looked up at me as if he was pleading for an explanation."
Two other women teachers were hospitalized with gunshot wounds in their limbs. The Times of London said they were believed to have been hit when Hamilton opened fire as made his way to the gym.
Police had no motive for the attack in the town 40 miles northwest of Edinburgh.
Hamilton, 43, a man with a festering grievance about his ouster as a Boy Scout leader, was a gun enthusiast. He had run boys' athletics groups while demanding reinstatement as a local Scout leader after being expelled in 1974 for "unstable and possibly improper behavior."
London's Daily Mirror newspaper reported Thursday that Scottish police investigated Hamilton in 1989 after complaints by parents who suspected their children had been abused during a weeklong holiday he supervised.
Hamilton, who lived five miles away in Stirling, wrote five days ago to Queen Elizabeth II complaining the Scout movement was sullying his name, British media reported.
Michael Forsyth, the British Cabinet minister responsible for Scotland, said he received letters from and once met Hamilton and that the man complained of police harassment because he was involved with children.
"I did discuss him with the police. They were not able to find any evidence against him which could result in prosecution," Forsyth said.
Neighbors said Hamilton was a solitary individual whose hobbies were photography and shooting.