Daughter of Sandy Hook principal: Alex Jones verdict ‘empowered me to become the person I once was’

By Rob Ryser | The News-Times

Erica Lafferty lost that part of herself which would console the outcast and stand up to the bully when harassers who denied that her mother died in the Sandy Hook massacre became so numerous that they “swallowed her whole.”

“That part of me was largely taken,” Lafferty told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday, one day after a Waterbury jury awarded her a share of the $965 million Alex Jones must pay in damages to eight families for calling the slaying of her mother Dawn Hochsprung and 25 other educators and first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.” “For the last 10 years, I have been trying to find that person.”

While Lafferty’s $76 million share of the eye-opening jury award won’t bring her mother back or erase the “hell and torture I’ve been through for a decade,” the sheer size of the $965 million verdict and the clear line it draws about the liability of conspiracy lies gives Lafferty the grounding she needs to take her life back.

“The jury came back with a message so powerful and poised and strong that the public will not tolerate this,” Lafferty said of six-member jury, who heard four weeks of emotional and sometimes confrontational testimony, including a vicious exchange while Jones was on the stand. “I am empowered to become the person I was once was.”