Gunmaker Remington subpoenaed school records of slain Sandy Hook children, teachers, lawyers say
Firearms maker Remington subpoenaed the report cards and attendance and disciplinary records of five kindergartners and first graders murdered in 2012's Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, lawyers for the families suing Remington said in a court filing Thursday. Remington also requested the employment files of four of the teachers shot dead by the gunman's Remington Bushmaster AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, Vice News reports.
The 20-year-old gunman killed 20 young children and four adults at the Newtown, Connecticut, grade school, and the families of some of the slain children have been suing Remington since 2014, alleging that the gunmaker marketed its military-style rifles to young, at-risk males.
"There is no conceivable way that these children's 'application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, [and] disciplinary records,' to name only some of the things sought by the subpoena, will assist Remington in its defense, and the plaintiffs do not understand why Remington would invade the families' privacy with such a request," Thursday's legal filing said. "Nonetheless, this personal and private information has been produced to Remington."
The victims' families asked the court to expand the categories of information Remington was blocked from subpoenaing. For its part, "Remington previously responded to a discovery request for its internal company communications by producing more than 18,000 unsorted files containing memes, cartoons, and ice bucket challenge videos," Vice reports. Remington's did not respond to Vice's request for comment.
Josh Koskoff, one of the lawyers representing the Sandy Hook parents, told Vice his clients "have no explanation" for why Remington subpoenaed the school records of the five children, adding, "The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on Dec. 14, 2012." You can read the filing at Vice News.
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