Lenie Urbina graduated from the University of Connecticut in May. With a wide smile on her face, she collected her diploma at Gampel Pavilion to the cheers of her friends and family. As she walked, Lenie’s mind slipped to the 20 Sandy Hook Elementary students and the six staff members who were killed 12 years ago in a tragedy that shocked the nation.
Lenie was there that day; a fourth grader hiding in the gym supply closet trying not to jump at the sound of gunshots. The tragedy would follow her for years, as she became a focal point for conspiracy theorists who claimed the shooting was a hoax.
Behind the activist, sorority leader, driven student and aspiring lawyer that Lenie is today, part of her is still that fourth grader – a girl fighting to reclaim her identity.
As she looks ahead to starting law school at Quinnipiac University this fall, Lenie uses her trauma as fuel to continue advocating for an end to gun violence.
“I’ve been doing this for ‘little me’ for so many years,” she says.
When Lenie woke up on Dec. 14, 2012, she begged her mom not to make her go to school. She couldn’t explain it in words, but she had a terrible gut feeling.
Her mom, Michelle, thought Lenie was just being difficult. The night before, Lenie had sung with her classmates at the winter chorus concert — a tradition for every fourth-grade class at Sandy Hook. The festivities continued with a celebration at a frozen yogurt shop. Lenie came home that night excited for school the next day.
The next morning, her anxiety subsided once Lenie got to school and mingled with her friends. But it lingered in the back of her mind as she walked into one of her favorite classes: gym. While her teachers gave instructions for the morning’s activities, the overhead loudspeaker abruptly clicked on and off. The teachers raced to the gym doors and covered their windows with black paper. Then, in hushed voices, they urged the 45 frightened students into a corner. Through the thick gym walls, Lenie could hear a woman’s scream, a voice yell “Put your hands up!” and bang after bang.
“You can hold hands with the person next to you if you’re scared,” one teacher whispered.
Lenie remained outwardly calm as she tried to comfort classmates worried about younger siblings in nearby classrooms. But she couldn’t slow her racing heart.
Suddenly, two police officers in SWAT armor flung the doors open and told everyone to get into the supply closet. It was tiny and filled with gym equipment, but everyone crowded in and huddled together on the floor.
The police later returned and told the students to link arms to exit through the school’s back entrance. They warned the children to close their eyes, but Lenie didn’t listen.
“If there is one thing I could go back and tell myself, it’s ‘Don’t open your eyes,’” she says.
Today, she still sees the bloody bodies lying in the hallway and hears teachers and police officers crying.
The shooter came in through the front entrance. Instead of continuing straight toward the gym, he turned right, into the hallway of kindergarten and first grade classrooms. He killed 26 people that morning.
To Lenie, this nightmare seemed to stretch for hours. She was shocked to learn it lasted just over five minutes.
As surviving students were whisked away to safety, Lenie’s father, Curtis, a stay-at-home dad, rushed to the school with her 3-year-old sister Sky.
They were directed to a nearby firehouse where Lenie and her classmates had been taken. When they saw each other, they ran sobbing into each other’s arms. While holding tight to his daughter, Curtis texted Michelle, who was already on her way from her work at a bank in Bethel.
Other families’ nightmares continued as they learned their children were unaccounted for. One was the brother of Lenie’s best friend and classmate. While his parents stayed behind to await news of their younger son, the Urbinas took Lenie’s friend home for the evening. As they walked to their car, they were intercepted by a reporter from NBC Connecticut who interviewed Lenie, capturing a clip of a small, shaken 9-year-old girl, with a mane of curly hair.
“I was in the gym, and I heard, like, seven loud booms, and then the teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled, and I kept hearing these booming noises,” she told the TV interviewer.
When they finally made it home, Lenie’s parents tried to distract her and her friend with cartoons and rock painting. But the respite was short-lived as they began to learn about the victims. One was the brother of Lenie’s friend. Others were some of the children Lenie had eaten frozen yogurt with the night before.
Lenie also learned that another victim was Avielle Richman, a first grader who Lenie treated like a little sister. With Lenie being small for her age and both girls having strikingly curly hair, they were jokingly described as twins. Lenie’s fondest memories are of reading books like Fancy Nancy to Avielle in the Sandy Hook library.
The following weeks were a whirlwind of emotions. Between grief and survivor’s guilt, there was also the thrill of being in the limelight – including the television interview.
Lenie had never been one to cry easily, but she especially tried to avoid it in the days following the shooting. She believed that if her parents saw she was okay, they would be okay too.
By early January, Lenie and her Sandy Hook classmates resumed school at a different building in Newtown. On one of her first days back, Lenie was thrilled to learn she would be part of a group of students to perform at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
The 26 students sang “America the Beautiful” in Caesars Superdome with Jennifer Hudson, green ribbons pinned to their polos in honor of the shooting victims. They also got a surprise visit from Beyoncé, who chatted with the children and snapped a photo with Lenie.
Lenie was prominent in the front row, standing tall and proud despite her small stature. She would soon discover that fame is a double-edged sword, especially when rooted in tragedy. This tribute to their hometown was quickly skewed by conspiracy theorists looking for “proof” that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax.
“That was when I think it really started to kick off,” Lenie says. “They started pointing each of us out and matching us to victims… to be like, ‘Your child’s not dead, they’re right there.’”
Despite Lenie’s parents’ efforts to shield her from the aggressive conspiracies about her and her family, a child’s curiosity is powerful.
Three years after the tragedy, when she was 12, Lenie Googled her name and was stunned by what popped up. Michelle sat her down and explained that there was a group of conspiracy theorists that believed Sandy Hook was a government hoax to deny Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
As conspiracy theorists looked for “proof” that the shooting didn’t happen, they matched the faces of living children to each of the victims. They insisted that, due to their similar size and shared curly hair, Avielle was still alive and living with another family in Newtown under the assumed name “Lenie Urbina.”
UConn journalism professor Amanda J. Crawford, who studies conspiracy theories about mass shootings, said the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories started immediately in fringe internet forums — many rooted in mistakes and inconsistencies in the breaking news coverage. Prominent right-wing provocateur Alex Jones amplified to millions of followers of his radio show and Infowars website the baseless conspiracy theory that parents, students and other survivors were crisis actors paid to stage the tragedy so that the United States government could use it to take away Americans’ guns.
Some of Jones’s most outrageous claims originated with fellow conspiracist Wolfgang Halbig, a retired Florida public school security employee who became obsessed with Sandy Hook and tried to prove that Lenie and Avielle are the same person. He published Lenie’s photo and address online and traveled to Newtown several times — some at Jones’ expense — to press town officials for voluminous public records, including the names of students from the 2013 Super Bowl performance, seeking to prove that Avielle and other victims were there. In 2015, Halbig brought photos of Avielle and Lenie to a man in Texas he claimed to be an “expert witness” of document examination to “confirm” the girls were the same person.
“In Halbig’s world, Lenie was significant ‘proof’ that the children are still alive,” says Lenny Pozner, a father whose first-grade son Noah was killed in the shooting.
In 2014, Pozner founded the HONR Network to fight internet conspiracy theorists who spread falsehoods about his son and other victims. Since then, Pozner has successfully gotten countless hoax platforms circulating fictitious content about Lenie and Avielle removed.
In 2020, Halbig was arrested in Florida and charged with the unlawful possession of Pozner’s personal information such as his Social Security Number; the charges were later dropped.
Though there are still active hoax sites, searching Lenie’s name on Google today will yield smiling photos on her sorority’s Instagram page and her charity work providing food to hospital staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, Halbig continues to send rambling emails to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the press spewing Sandy Hook conspiracies.
“It’s very likely that [Halbig] is still talking about Lenie,” Pozner says.
Until her sophomore year of high school, the only social media Lenie used was Musical.ly, now TikTok, though she took the precaution not to post her face or name.
She kept her Instagram account private until 2019, when a video of her pranking viewers that she was celebrating her own 12th birthday went viral on TikTok and garnered 100,000 followers. Today, Lenie has nearly 3,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 7,000 followers on Instagram. Her content is a mix of sharing her personal life and advocating for gun policy reform.
Lenie doesn’t want her past to take center stage.
“I want to share the good parts of my life,” she says.
She uses Instagram Stories and TikTok reposts to advocate against gun violence and criticizes President Trump for his opposition to more gun regulation. She condemns his decision to shut down the federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, but she hopes to work there one day — when it gets reinstated, she says, not if.
She doesn’t explicitly post about Sandy Hook for fear of attracting attention from trolls and conspiracy theorists. Two years ago, she made an exception. In December 2023, 11 years after the shooting, she posted a video clip of her and her classmates singing “Light the Candles” during the winter chorus concert the night before. Innocent voices harmonized, “But wouldn’t it be nice; if we could have one celebration; all of us together.”
Lenie has since removed the post.
“People from law school are starting to follow me and I feel like if they see [the video], that’s all they’ll think about when they see me,” she says. “I want them to know me for things other than the tragedy and then learn that later on.”
Lenie still receives messages from Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists. Recently, a Virginia man sent her Instagram messages calling her the “messiah.” He’s also tried messaging her sister and boyfriend, and mailed letters to her house pleading with her to help him “befriend the people of Sandy Hook.” Her family has since filed a restraining order against him.
Lenie doesn’t engage with the conspiracists. She has filed more reports with the Newtown and UConn police than she can count. While each encounter is nerve-racking, especially when it involves her address getting leaked, she reminds herself that they have never physically harmed her.
However, trauma lingers. Occasionally, Lenie will awake with a gut feeling similar to the one she felt the morning of the shooting. When that happens, she locks herself away in her apartment — sometimes for the entire day.
Lenie graduated from UConn with a degree in business management and minors in political science and communications.
A blue cord decorating her gown represented her advocacy against gun violence. She served as the founder and president for UConn’s Everytown for Gun Safety chapter, Students Demand Action. As she heads to law school at Quinnipiac, she has passed the torch to lead the UConn chapter to rising juniors Jackie Hegarty and Audrey Nichols — two more Sandy Hook survivors.
“I’m not anti-gun; I’m anti-gun violence,” she says. “And I feel like that’s something everyone should agree on.”
Lenie believes that her generation has a responsibility to make people care enough about the impacts of gun violence to fight for an end to it.
In her 2023 memorial post, she wrote: “Now, eleven years later, we’re older, we’re stronger, and we’re still here. Our country has failed us in more ways than ever possible. We should have been the last one.”
Karla Perez is a journalism major at the University of Connecticut. This story is republished via CT Community News, a service of the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative, an organization sponsored by journalism departments at college and university campuses across the state.