Principal of doomed Connecticut school left trail of happy tweets before massacre

Principal of doomed Connecticut school left trail of happy tweets before massacre

The principal of the doomed Connecticut school left a trail of happy tweets describing an idyllic life at Sandy Hook Elementary â€" before a masked gunman changed everything.

“It’s a beautiful day for our annual evacuation drill!” Dawn Hochsprung tweeted last month, when nobody dreamed the small-town school would become a killing ground.

“Setting up for the Sandy Hook nonfiction book preview for staff,” Hochsprung wrote Thursday, tacking on a picture of children’s books. “Here we come.”

27 DEAD, INCLUDING 20 CHILDREN, IN SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING

A day earlier, she shared more mirth via Twitter: “Sandy Hook students enjoy the rehearsal for our 4th grade winter concert â€" a talented group led by Maryrose Kristopik!”

Hochsprung was murdered Friday in a massacre that also claimed the life of school psychologist Mary Sherlach, four other staffers and 20 children.

Natalie Hammond, 40, a teacher at the school, was rushed to a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound and is expected to survive, CBS reported.

The first of the slain children was identified as 7-year-old Ana Grace Marquez, whose grandfather Jorge Marquez is mayor of the Puerto Rican city of Manaubo.

PHOTOS: SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING

“We spent all day waiting for news, hoping that she was just wounded,” Marquez told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper. “But her parents warned us she might not make it. They just gave us the sad news.”

But as the tragedy continued to unfold, there also emerged tales of heroism by teachers like Kristopik, who teaches music and managed to rescue her students from the maniac.

“We hid in the closet; we stayed quiet; we held hands; we hugged,” she told the Daily News.

A native of nearby Naugatuck, Hochsprung, 47, was a mother of two daughters and three stepdaughters and a longtime teacher in the Danbury school district. Her husband, George, still teaches in the district.

When Hochsprung started as principal at Sandy Hook in 2010, the bubbly brunette could barely contain her excitement in an interview with the Newtown Bee, a local newspaper.

“I don’t think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day,” she said. Hochsprung lived with her husband in Woodbury, in a lakeside condo complex.

Neighbor Todd Brighthaupt said it was a second marriage for both. He said Hochsprung “always had a smile on her face.”

“You can tell she loves children,” said Brighthaupt, 38, a corrections officer. “Every time I would be outside playing with our kids . . .  she’d always get down on their level, ask them how they’re doing. You could just see it in her eyes, always a smile.”

And you could see it in her tweets.

“Sandy Hook 1st graders learn about the three As of concert behavior: attention, appreciation and applause,” she posted Nov. 28.

Meanwhile, Sherlach’s stunned family gathered at the home she shared in Trumbull with Bill, her husband of three decades.

Her daughter Maura, who teaches music in Salem, N.J., realized her mother was dead after hearing television reports that the Sandy Hook school psychologist had been killed, son-in-law Eric Schwartz said.

“She was always helpful, always upbeat,” said Schwartz. “She was truly a nice woman, as kind as can be.”

Sherlach, 56, worked at the school for two decades, said Schwartz. She summered on Lake Owasco in the Finger Lakes region of New York, in a house that had been in the family for generations.

“She just loved spending summers there looking at the sunset,” said Schwartz, 27, of Deptford, N.J.

A devout Catholic, Schwartz said Sherlach was planning to spend Christmas with them in Jersey this year.

Sherlach’s other daughter, 24-year-old Katie, is a graduate student in Washington, D.C.

According to a biography on the Sandy Hook school website, Sherlach began working there in 1994 after serving at schools in Redding, North Haven and New Haven.

Former school superintendent John Reed praised her Friday as a person of warmth, caring and intelligence.

“If there ever was a person, by qualifications and personality, to work with children, to be a school psychologist, it was Mary,” Reed said.

-With Chelsia Rose Marcius

csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

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