ORANGE PARK, Fla. – The closure that began last week to the murder of Somer Thompson in Orange Park may be duplicated for the families of children who were gunned down in a mass shooting two years ago. The two tragedies may soon have a unique link.
One of those tragedies is the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which happened in December of 2012. The 20-year-old shooter, Adam Lanza, killed his own mother in their home, before his shooting rampage killed 20 students and six school staffers.
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He committed suicide and now the town of Newtown owns the Lanza home. While a company has offered to demolish the house for free, the town is deciding what to do with the property.
They've apparently heard about what happened in Orange Park. Heavy machinery and a dumpster full of debris could be seen along Gano Avenue, where Jarred Harrell kidnapped and killed 7-year-old Somer Thompson in October 2009.
Harrell is serving life in prison, but had been living in a home that was going through foreclosure. Last week, firefighters set fire to the home as part of a training exercise, burning the home to the ground.
The bank had given the home to the Somer Thompson Foundation, which donated it to the fire department, so some good could come from the tragedy.
Somer's mother, Diena Thompson, said she has plans for the property, involving something that will honor the little girl, but she has not revealed those plans yet.
"We don't want to just leave this piece of beautiful ground that God blessed us with and let it sit dormant. We want to do good things with it and touch a lot more people than we've ever touched before," Diena Thompson said.
That may have already begun. Diena Thompson told News4Jax that a news reporter in Newtown, Connecticut, called her, after word spread about her involvement in doing something positive with Jarred Harrell's foreclosed property. Diena Thompson said whatever the town decides to do with the land on which the Sandy Hook shooter's home sits, she wants to be there to see it happen.