It was every parent`s nightmare: to send your children off to the supposed safety of the neighborhood school and have them fall victim to random, senseless violence.
But when Winnetka residents woke on Saturday morning, it was to the grim realization that this was not a nightmare; it really happened and they and their children had to try to come to grips with it.
It was not the kind of thing that`s supposed to happen in the 22d wealthiest community in the nation, a suburb that had its last murder 31 years ago.
”You never think it`s possible,” said Anne Shimojima, wife of the principal of Hubbard Woods Elementary School, where one child was shot to death and five others seriously wounded Friday by a woman who later killed herself. ”The doors of North Shore schools are not locked.”
One of the suburb`s police officers, who is more used to investigating burglaries and loud parties than killings and suicide, mused: ”I guess this shows, yes, it does happen in Winnetka. It happens all over the place. Nobody`s immune.”
A small army of psychologists and social workers were making plans to counsel the school`s children and their parents. Some of them gathered in the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave., for a session Friday evening.
”The important thing to get across to our children,” one father told the group, ”is that this was an unusual event, and that this school is a safe place.”
Just a few minutes before he spoke, police removed the body of Laurie Dann, a 30-year-old baby-sitter, from the spacious two-story stone house where she had holed up for seven hours after invading the nearby school and shooting the six primary-grade children.
She had shot herself in the head with a .32-caliber pistol, one of three guns she carried when she entered the school shortly before 11 a.m. Friday.
Police were unable to explain how Dann, who had a history of psychiatric problems and was being sought by the FBI for making death threats, had been able to obtain a license to carry one of the guns, a .357 Magnum that was found on the floor of a school restroom.
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”These are the things that trouble law-enforcement agencies everywhere in the country,” Winnetka Police Chief Herbert Timm said. ”People are getting weapons who shouldn`t have them.
”We have a hodgepodge system” of gun registration, the chief said.
”Unless we get it together, we`ve just got other tragedies out there waiting to occur.”
According to police, Laurie Dann`s final day began about 9 a.m. when she arrived at the home of Padraig and Marian Rushe, 1250 Forest Glen Dr. South in Winnetka, where she had baby-sat off and on for the last year and a half. Police said they believe she had driven there from Madison, Wis., where she had been living, and was keeping a previously planned date to take two of the five Rushe children, boys 4 and 6 years old, to a carnival in Evanston.
Actually, there was no carnival and Dann evidently drove to Ravinia Elementary School in Highland Park with the two boys, where she set fire to a plastic bag filled with a flammable liquid and then ran off. The fire was quickly extinguished.
From there, police said, she went to a day-care center in Highland Park, where she walked up to the front door carrying a can of gasoline, but ran off without setting it afire.
She returned to the Rushe home about 10:15 a.m., took the two boys to the basement and, according to Winnetka Police Sgt. Patricia McConnell, ”mumbled something about having to go out to the car.” After the boys` mother went to the basement to check on them, the stairwell burst into flames.
Marian Rushe, in a near panic, broke out a basement window frame to get herself and her children out of the burning house. By that time, Dann had driven to the school.
She first walked into a boys` restroom, police said, and shot 6-year-old Robert Trossman with the .357 Magnum, leaving the gun on the restroom floor. Two boys from a special education class saw the shooting and ran into their classroom to report it. Their teacher rushed to the principal`s office.
In the meantime, the wounded boy managed to drag himself into his own classroom, where his teacher covered his wound and told her pupils to lie down on the floor.
By this time, police said, Dann had walked into another classroom presided over by substitute teacher Amy Moses, 30, who had broken up the 25-member 2d-grade class into six instructional groups. Dann ordered the teacher to gather the children at one end of the room.
Evan Burkholder, whose 7-year-old son, Jay, was in the classroom, said some of the children thought Dann was some sort of ”Officer Friendly,” the traditional name for police officers who talk to schoolchildren.
They quickly learned differently, when, according to McConnell, the teacher put her hands on Dann`s wrists and Dann began shooting.
The shots fatally wounded Nicholas Corwin, 8, of 700 Locust St., Winnetka, and wounded five others, all from Winnetka. Listed in critical condition early Saturday at Evanston Hospital were the first victim, Robert Trossman, 6, of 871 Bell Lane; Lindsay Fisher, 8, of 1045 W. Westmore Rd.;
Kathryn Miller, 7, of 1415 Asbury Ave.; and Mark Tebourek, 8, of 804 Boal Pkwy. Peter Munro, 8, of 1086 Laurel Ave., was in serious condition in Highland Park Hospital.
Dann then ran out the door, while two of the horrified children hid under the teacher`s desk and most of the rest ran to the principal`s office.
One of the first Winnetka police officers to reach the school, who refused to give his name, said the scene was frightful.
”I`ve seen children who`ve died of many things, but never children who were brutally murdered like that,” he said. ”It was horrible.
”Your heart`s gotta be in your stomach. The one boy was dead and they covered him up. One of the injured kids said to the paramedics, `Am I going to die now?` ”
Dann, meanwhile, had driven her white Toyota Cressida down Hamptondale Road and into a tree. She abandoned the car and ran through a woods to a house at 2 Kent Rd., where she confronted Ruth Ann Andrew and her son, Philip, 20.
After a brief, confusing conversation, Dann made a telephone call, apparently to her mother, while Ruth Ann Andrew slipped away. Moments later, Philip Andrew tried to wrest the .22-caliber pistol from Dann but was shot in the chest. He was in serious condition in Highland Park Hospital.
Philip Andrew was removed by paramedics. Sometime between then and 7 p.m., Dann shot herself in a second-floor bedroom. Her body was found when a police commando squad from the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System finally entered the house.
In the meantime, officials at Hubbard Woods School kept the children inside until about 3:15 p.m., despite the droves of anxious, weeping parents who showed up outside. While the parents waited, social workers and psychologists talked with the children about the tragedy.
”The school couldn`t have handled it any better,” said Blanche Romey, after she picked up her daughter, Katie, a 1st-grader. ”The kids have done a lot of listening, and the school officials told us to take them home and let them talk.”
Calvin Tindall, an 8-year-old 2d-grader, said he was outside when the shooting took place. ”Then I went inside and we sat in a circle and just talked about our feelings,” he said.
Evan Burkholder said his son, Jay, ”seemed calm. He said he was sad because his friends had been injured, and he was mad at the woman for doing what she did.”
At the Andrew home, about 100 police officers from nine suburbs stood watch, refusing for several hours to rush the house because, as Chief Timm said, ”We`ve had enough violence today.”
Near the end of the vigil, Dann`s father, Norman Wasserman, could be heard pleading through a bullhorn:
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”Please come out of there if you can here me, please. Laurie, please come out. Laurie, pick up the phone. Laurie, pick up the phone. Please . . . please.”
The incident spread fear throughout North Shore communities after Timm told reporters that Dann may have planted incendiary devices in the area.
In Glencoe School District 35, Supt. Charles R. Young ordered all 925 students bused home, even though about half of them normally walk home.
”We didn`t want to take a chance of putting kids on the street when we were uncertain what was out there,” he said.
As the day wore on, police began to downplay the possibility that residents might run into explosive or flammable devices. They said their concern had been based on reports from the two young Rushe children, who had accompanied Dann as she apparently visited the Highland Park school and day-care center with the flammable items.
In addition, police said, they found flasks filled with flammable liquid in the Rushe home and in the car Dann had abandoned.
The final mystery, and the biggest one, was why anyone would shoot innocent schoolchildren. And Timm said that mystery might never be solved.
”I don`t think we can answer those questions now,” he said. ”They lie with Laurie Dann.”